Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan , French President Emmanuel Macron and his South African counterpart Cyril Ramaphosa are on a list of ...
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan, French President Emmanuel Macron and his South African counterpart Cyril Ramaphosa are on a list of 14 world leaders potentially targeted for surveillance using the Pegasus hacking software, reported The Guardian.
The Pegasus spyware is developed, marketed and licensed to governments around the world by the Israeli cyber intelligence company NSO Group. The company says that it licenses its software only to “vetted governments” and that Pegasus is meant to be targeted at criminals.
But a leaked list, featuring more than 50,000 phone numbers “concentrated in countries known to engage in surveillance of their citizens”, was accessed by Paris-based media nonprofit Forbidden Stories and Amnesty International, which shared it with 17 news organisations as part of the Pegasus Project.
Khan was chosen as a “person of interest by India in 2019”, The Guardian reported. Macron appeared to have been chosen as a potential target for surveillance by Morocco in 2019. Ramaphosa was reportedly chosen by Rwanda in the same year.
King Mohammed VI of Morocco, a target of surveillance in 2019, was reportedly chosen by the security forces of his own country.
Apart from heads of governments, World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus also featured on the list of potential targets. He was also reportedly chosen by Morocco in...
