Over 40 Indian journalists, activists on list of potential Pegasus surveillance targets

The leaked database contains around 300 verified Indian mobile telephone numbers, including those of ministers, opposition leaders, etc

At least 40 Indian journalists and around a dozen activists, including the Bhima Koregaon case accused, have figured in a leaked list of potential targets for surveillance using hacking software 'Pegasus', sold by the Israeli surveillance company NSO Group.

The leaked database contains around 300 verified Indian mobile telephone numbers, including those of ministers, opposition leaders, the legal community, businessmen, government officials, scientists, rights activists and others, The Wire reported on Sunday night.

In a statement, the government said allegations regarding surveillance by its agencies on specific people have "no concrete basis or truth associated with it whatsoever".

Read: All you need to know about the Pegasus spyware

Referring to the report in October 2019 when the names of over a dozen activists and journalists in the country surfaced in a similar list, the government claimed that the latest news report also "appears to be a similar fishing expedition, based on conjectures and exaggerations to malign the Indian democracy and its institutions".

The leaked database was accessed by Paris-based media Forbidden Stories and Amnesty International and was shared with The Wire, Le Monde, The Guardian, Washington Post, Die Zeit, Suddeutsche Zeitung and 10 other Mexican, Arabian and European news organisations as part of a collaborative investigation called the ‘Pegasus Project’.

Forensic tests, conducted on a small cross-section of phones, showed signs of targeting by Pegasus spyware in 37 phones, of which 10 are Indian, The Wire said adding that it is not possible to conclusively state whether it witnessed an attack attempt or was successfully compromised without subjecting a phone to this technical analysis.

The portal also said it will be revealing the names that it has been able to verify under different categories, in a step by step fashion with its partners over the next few days.

According to The Wire report, a review of the leaked database showed that at least nine numbers belonged to eight activists, lawyers and academics arrested in the Bhima Koregaon case. These include Anand Teltumbde, Rona Wilson, Vernon Gonsalves, Shoma Sen, Sudha Bharadwaj, Arun Ferreira, Hany Babu and Gautam Navlakha, among others. A dozen more numbers belonging to close relatives, friends, lawyers and colleagues of those arrested also appear in the leaked list.

Names of the journalists on the list include Sushant Singh, J Gopikrishnan, Shishir Gupta, Ritika Chopra, Prashant Jha, Prem Shankar Jha, Swati Chaturvedi, Rahul Singh, Muzammil Jalil, Iftikhar Geelani and Sandeep Unnithan. The names of The Wire's founder-editors Siddharth Varadarajan and MK Venu are also is on the list.

The Wire report said the presence of a phone number alone in the data does not reveal whether a device was infected with Pegasus or subject to an attempted hack and it could be revealed through digital forensics.

A number of phones, including that of Varadarajan, Venu and Sushant Singh were infected using Pegasus, while analysis found evidence of a hacking attempt on journalists Smita Sharma and Vijaita Singh's phones.

The report also said digital forensics showed activist SAR Geelani, who was acquitted in the Parliament Attack case and died recently, was also under surveillance. The Wire report said his phone was hacked.

The Wire, in collaboration with Amnesty International’s Security Lab, carried out a forensic analysis of Geelani’s phone, an iPhone still preserved by his family, and can confirm that the phone was compromised on and off for over two years, the report said.

Pegasus is a spyware developed by NSO Group and the company has said that it sells the spyware only to government agencies. Pegasus had hit the headlines in India in October 2019 when several Indian activists and journalists had confirmed that they were snooped using the spyware.