Question: Recently, an investigation by an international media consortium revealed that more than 300 distinct personalities were targeted of hacking through the spyware called Pegasus. This spyware is of which country origin?
(a) Russia
(b) China
(c) Israel
(d) USA
Answer: (c)
Context:
- Recently, a ruckus hit Indian politics over use of Pegasus spyware to conduct surveillance on ministers, opposition leaders, journalists, government officials and scientists of India.
What is Pegasus?
- Pegasus is a spyware tool developed by an Israeli firm, the NSO Group,a Tel Aviv-based cyber-security company.
- As the name suggests, spyware spy on people through their phones. Once Pegasus is installed, the attacker has complete access to the target user’s phone.
- The NSO Group specializes in “surveillance technology” and claims to provide the tool exclusively to licensed government intelligence and law enforcement agencies across the world to help fight crime and terrorism.
Range of suspected spying:
- As of investigation by an international media consortium, the leaked list of potential target having spied includes 40 Indian journalists, Indian ministers, opposition leaders, government officials and businessmen.
- The leaked database has around 50,000 phone numbers from around the globe.
- This leaked database was accessed by Forbidden stories and Amnesty International and was shared with The Wire, Le Monde, The Guardian, The Washington Post and others as part of an investigation named the Pegasus Project.
- India was among the 10 countries in the list where the numbers were concentrated and Mexico topped the list with 15,000 numbers.
- A large share of the numbers was also from West Asian countries such as Bahrain, UAE, and Saudi Arabia, with Pakistan, Hungary and France being the other prominent countries on the list.
Indian Govt stand on snooping allegations:
- As the purview of snooping covers India,therefore the allegations were suspiciously put forward on Government of India whether it has involvement in mass snooping.
- The allegations also get strength as Pegasus developer NSO Group claims to provide the tool exclusively to licensed government intelligence.
- From Indian Govt side, on first day of Monsoon session i.e 19 July 2021, Union Information Technology and Communications minister Ashwini Vaishnaw rejected all charges of snooping as false and baseless.
- He alleged that report itself states that presence of a number in list doesn’t amount to snooping.
- Further, he clarified that in India, there’s a well-established procedure through which lawful interception of electronic communication is carried out for purpose of national security.
By-Amar Mani Upadhyay