Cyber security experts find proof of Pegasus on phones in India: Report

The Pegasus spyware issue is back under the spotlight. In the Budget Session of Parliament that commences on Monday, opposition parties are expected to target the Narendra Modi government over a report in The New York Times that claimed India purchased Pegasus from Israel as part of a $2 billion arms deal.

On Monday, The Indian Express reported that the expert committee probing the use of Pegasus in India had been informed by two cyber security researchers that they had found evidence of the presence of the spyware on phones in India. The Supreme Court in October last year constituted a panel to investigate allegations Pegasus was used to spy on people in India. The committee was formed in response to pleas from people who alleged they were targeted by Pegasus.

“One of the two researchers analysed iPhones of seven people, of which two were found to be infected with Pegasus... The researcher submitted an affidavit to the Supreme Court and subsequently deposed before the panel to say that the evidence on the two phones were uncovered using a forensic tool,” The Indian Express reported.

This researcher informed the Supreme Court in an affidavit, “Multiple entries going back to March 2021 indicating that the Pegasus malware tried to delete entries from the process table databases.”

The second researcher analysed Android phones of six petitioners. This researcher found “distinct versions of the malware on four phones, while two of the remaining devices had variants of the original versions of Pegasus present on them”.

“We have an emulator for Android on which we verified that it has all the variants of the malware. What we found is that this (malware) is so virulent that it could not have been used for legitimate purposes. It not only reads your chats, it can get your videos, turn the audio or video at any time,” the researcher told The Indian Express.