Explainer: What Is Pegasus And What Has WhatsApp Got To Do With It?

Ahead of the Monsoon Session of Parliament, an old issue seems to have surfaced once again – Pegasus spyware.  Even as the Narendra Modi-led government convened an all-party meeting with Opposition leaders on the eve of the Monsoon session of Parliament, news of an alleged report called the “Pegasus Report” on the purported wire-tapping of politicians, ministers and other high-level officials started flying fast and thick. So what is Pegasus? Pegasus is a spyware that was developed by an Israeli “cyber weapons” company named NSO Group.  The first time it hit the news was in 2016 when several iPhone users were believed to be targeted by the software to hack them. While iPhone claimed to fix the vulnerabilities that allowed Pegasus to infiltrate its users’ devices, the spyware was later reported to also hack Android devices. What is its connection to India? In India, the app was widely reported in 2019 after complaints about the app allegedly targeting Indian journalists and activists by hacking their devices. According to allegations by messaging app WhatsApp, at least a dozen Indian users including journalists and human rights activists were among those globally spied upon by unnamed entities using an Israeli sypware Pegasus. It said that at…
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