Israeli spyware allegedly targeted Pakistani officials' phones: report

The Guardian says scores of defence and intelligence officials are among those who could have been compromised

The mobile phones of at least two dozen government officials were allegedly targeted earlier this year with technology owned by the Israeli spyware company NSO Group, according to a report by The Guardian.

The UK newspaper report quoted sources as saying that scores of Pakistani senior defence and intelligence officials were among those whose data could have been compromised.

The alleged targeting, it said, was discovered during an analysis of 1,400 people whose phones were the focus of hacking attempts in a two-week period earlier this year.

All the suspected intrusions exploited vulnerability in WhatsApp software that potentially allowed the users of the malware to access messages and data on the targets’ phones.

The discovery of the breach in May prompted WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook, to file a lawsuit against NSO in October in which it accused the company of “unauthorised access and abuse” of its services.

The lawsuit claimed intended targets included “attorneys, journalists, human rights activists, political dissidents, diplomats, and other senior foreign government officials”.

NSO has said it will contest the claim and has insisted that its technology is only used by law enforcement agencies around the world to snare criminals, terrorists and paedophiles.

“This kind of spyware is marketed as designed for criminal investigations. But the open secret is that it also winds up being used for political surveillance and government-on-government spying,” said John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at the Citizen Lab, an academic research group located at the University of Toronto that has worked with WhatsApp to help identify victims of the alleged hacks.

“Spyware companies are clearly contributing to the proliferation of state-on-state technological espionage. No government seems particularly immune. This is probably further stretching the patience of governments around the world with this industry,” he added.

The government of the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, is facing questions from human rights activists about whether it has bought NSO technology after it emerged that 121 WhatsApp users in India were allegedly targeted earlier this year.

The figure included about two dozen alleged victims who are journalists, activists and human rights lawyers, a fact that prompted Modi opponents in the Indian National Congress to seek a supreme court inquiry into the matter.

Meanwhile, Pakistan is taking steps to address the matter.

Dr Arslan Khalid, PM’s adviser on digital issues, has said that the government is working on developing an alternative to WhatsApp to be used for sensitive government data and other classified information.

Government officials in Pakistan’s ministry of information technology have also reportedly advised officials to stop sharing classified information over WhatsApp and replace smartphones that were purchased before May 2019.