It is still not clear which government entity bought the software that has reportedly impacted 1,400 devices globally.
The
government has given time till November 4 to WhatsApp
for explaining how the Israeli surveillance software was used to spy
on some people in India and what the firm was doing to stop such
occurrences.
It
is still not clear which government entity bought the software that
has reportedly impacted 1,400 devices globally. WhatsApp has said it
was filing a complaint in the US against Israeli
technology firm NSO Group for the cyberattack that exploited
vulnerability in the app's video calling feature.
“Government
of India is concerned at the breach of privacy of citizens of India
on the messaging platform WhatsApp. We have asked WhatsApp to explain
the kind of breach and what it is doing to safeguard the privacy of
millions of Indian citizens,” Ravi Shankar Prasad, the Minister for
Electronics and Information Technology, tweeted.
The
Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) said the attempts to align the
government for a reported breach were “misleading”. “It is
clarified that the government operates strictly as per provisions of
the law. There are adequate safeguards to ensure that no innocent
citizen is harassed or his privacy breached,” it said. However, it
did not address the question of whether the central or state
governments or any of their agencies have ever bought NSO Group’s
spyware technology or its well-known product Pegasus.
In
the vulnerability, a WhatsApp user could receive what appears to be a
video call and even if the call is unanswered, the attacker could
transmit malicious code to infect the victim’s phone with spyware.
Another NSO Group software, Pegasus, was used to install spying
software on devices between August 2016 and August 2018 by
Toronto-based Citizen Lab.
The
NSO Group claims to sell surveillance technology to governments
globally only for the purposes of fighting terrorism and crime but
has been accused of selling to governments that have a track record
of spying on its citizens.
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