The FBI has stated that it had acquired and tested the Pegasus spyware belonging to Israeli NSO Group. The US law-enforcement and investigation agency’s shocking admission comes as there is global uproar against the use of the hacking tool by governments to spy on individuals.
The FBI says that it tested the surveillance tool on a limited license to “stay abreast of emerging technologies and tradecraft”. The bureau statement says that it did not actually use the tool for investigation, but added that its evaluation of it was related to security concerns if the spyware fell into the “wrong hands”.
NSO has said its technology is intended to help catch terrorists, paedophiles and hardened criminals. The company is currently being sued by Apple for violating its user terms and services agreement.
The FBI’s procurement of Pegasus, which occurred in 2019 under the Trump administration, was first reported by the New York Times.
The Guardian reports that a person close to the deal claimed that the deal occurred after a “long process”.
According to reports, the user of Pegasus can take complete control of a person’s phone, accessing messages, intercepting phone calls and using the phone as a remote listening device.
In India, the Pegasus plot is getting thicker with the Supreme Court-appointed technical committee examining the possibility of more than one spyware used to carry out the spyware attack.
Next week, another round of collection of devices will take place which is expected to put the probe on the fast track.
So far, only a couple of devices submitted to the panel have provided some insight to the cyber experts of the possibility of the devices being infected.
Apart from investigating the presence of spyware on the devices, the big question before the committee is how such a large set of phone numbers got collated in one place and who was behind it.
Out of the nearly 50,000 phone numbers selected worldwide, at least 400 were targeted in India and were said to be of possible interest to clients of Israel-based NSO group which is the maker of the Pegasus spyware.
- With inputs from Namrata Biji Ahuja