The Wire news website’s founder editor, Siddharth Varadarajan, and another journalist in India were targeted with Pegasus spyware this year, the nonprofit Amnesty International’s Security Lab was able to determine after testing their devices, it announced on Thursday. The journalists had received an alert from Apple that they were being targeted by “state-sponsored hacking,” following which they provided their phones to Amnesty for testing. NSO Group, the Pegasus spyware’s developer, only sells its technology to governments. India’s Intelligence Bureau imported hardware from NSO Group in 2017, trade data show.
Separately, The Washington Post reported that after the security alerts went out in October, government officials put ‘pressure’ on Apple to offer ‘alternative’ explanations to the public on why these warnings were sent to Opposition leaders and journalists. Union Ministers and Apple had made a series of misleading and unsubstantiated statements when these alerts went out, such as that these messages had gone out in 150 countries, when no other countries’ citizens — or ruling party lawmakers — had reported receiving a warning that week. According to the Post report, Praveen Chakravarty, the chairman of the All India Professionals’ Congress, was also likely targeted, based on an analysis of his phone by iVerify, a cybersecurity firm.