Following a damning investigation by Amnesty International’s Security Lab that two Indian journalists were among those whose iPhones were targeted with Israeli surveillance spyware Pegasus, Union Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar called the findings “half facts, fully embellished”.
In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Chandrasekhar rebutted the claims saying that the report was “terrible story telling”, further adding that his response and that of the Ministry has been clear that “it is for Apple to explain if their devices are vulnerable and what triggered these notifications”.
The two journalists then had provided their devices to Amnesty International for testing.
Chandrasekhar, in his post, alleged that the “story is half facts, fully embellished”, accompanied by a laughing emoticon.
“Left out of the story is Apple’s response on Oct 31-day of threat notifications. “Apple does not attribute the threat notifications to any specific state-sponsored attacker.
State-sponsored attackers are very well-funded and sophisticated, and their attacks evolve over time. Detecting such attacks relies on threat intelligence signals that are often imperfect and incomplete. It’s possible that some Apple threat notifications may be false alarms, or that some attacks are not detected. We are unable to provide information about what causes us to issue threat notifications, as that may help state-sponsored attackers adapt their behaviour to evade detection in the future,” he wrote.
“@GoI_MeitY’s & my response to this incident has been consistent and clear from the incident – That it is for Apple to explain if their devices are vulnerable and what triggered these notifications. Apple was asked to join the enquiry with @IndianCERT and meetings have been held and enquiry is ongoing. Those are the facts (sic),” he wrote.
“Rest of story is creative imagination and clickbaiting at work masquerading as journalism,” the minister alleged.
Rebutting @washingtonpost ‘s terrible story telling is tiresome, but someone has to do it.➡️This story is half facts, fully embellished 😅➡️Left out of the story is Apples response on Oct 31- day of threat notifications “Apple does not attribute the threat notifications to… https://t.co/6XhRC8QVBu
— Rajeev Chandrasekhar 🇮🇳 (@Rajeev_GoI) December 28, 2023
What is Pegasus?
Pegasus is an invasive spyware that has been developed by Israeli group NSO Group. The software can be used to access a phone’s messages as well as emails, eavesdrop on calls, track locations, and most dangerously film the owner of the phone with its camera.
In October, several Opposition leaders accused the BJP-led Centre of trying to hack into their phones after they got a warning message from on their iPhones. Apple had said that the recipient was “being targeted by state-sponsored attackers”.
Besides Tharoor and Moitram other leaders included Congress general secretary, organisations in-charge KC Venugopal, Shiv Sena (UBT) Rajya Sabha MP Priyanka Chaturvedi as well as Aam Aadmi Party MP Raghav Chadha. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi also alleged that several people working in his office had also received the alert.
BJP leaders had called the allegations “baseless” and Chandrasekhar had then said that BJP leader Piyush Goyal had also received the alert.
What did Amnesty’s latest findings say?
In a joint investigation published on Thursday, Amnesty International and The Washington Post said that the two journalists had been targeted by Pegasus, with the latest identified case occurring in October.
“Our latest findings show that increasingly, journalists in India face the threat of unlawful surveillance simply for doing their jobs, alongside other tools of repression including imprisonment under draconian laws, smear campaigns, harassment, and intimidation,” said Donncha O Cearbhaill, Head of Amnesty International’s Security Lab.
Describing the attack on Mangnale’s phone, Amnesty International, said, “The Security Lab recovered evidence from Anand Mangnale’s device of a zero-click exploit which was sent to his phone over iMessage on 23 August 2023, and designed to covertly install the Pegasus spyware. The phone was running iOS 16.6, the latest version available at the time.”
On Varadarajan, Amnesty said that the attempt to install Pegasus on his iPhone occurred on October 16.
“The same attacker-controlled email address used in the Pegasus attack against Anand Mangnale was also identified on Siddharth Varadarajan’s phone, confirming that both journalists were targeted by the same Pegasus customer,” it said.