WhatsApp reportedly confirms that Israeli spyware was being used to track Indian journalists

It was revealed yesterday that Facebook-owned online messaging platform WhatsApp sued Israeli surveillance firm NSO Group on Tuesday, accusing it of helping government spies break into the phones of roughly 1,400 users. Now it appears that some of those users had been Indian journalists.

WhatsApp.

WhatsApp.

A WhatsApp spokesperson told Indian Express that the company was aware of those targeted and had contacted each one of them.

WhatsApp first found a cyberattack involving a vulnerability in their video-calling feature back in May, wherein users were being attacked with spyware via a malicious video call, that would affect their device even without them answering the call.

“Indian journalists and human rights activists have been the target of surveillance and while I cannot reveal their identities and the exact number, I can say that it is not an insignificant number,” a WhatsApp spokesperson said in an interview with Indian Express.

WhatsApp head had said that their investigation led them to servers and Internet-hosting services that were previously associated with NSO.

Citizen Lab, a cybersecurity research laboratory based at the University of Toronto that worked with WhatsApp to investigate the phone hacking, told Reuters that the targets included well-known television personalities, prominent women who had been subjected to online hate campaigns and people who had faced “assassination attempts and threats of violence.”

Neither Citizen Lab nor WhatsApp identified the targets by name.

(Also read: WhatsApp security breach: Amnesty international files lawsuit against NSO group)

Governments have increasingly turned to sophisticated hacking software as officials seek to push their surveillance power into the furthest corners of their citizens' digital lives.



from Firstpost Tech Latest News https://ift.tt/36mmQJG

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Elon Musk’s bid spotlights Twitter’s unique role in public discourse – and what changes might be in store

Twitter has been in the news a lot lately, albeit for the wrong reasons. Its stock growth has languished and the platform itself has largely remained the same since its founding in 2006. On April 14, 2022, Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, made an offer to buy Twitter and take the public company private. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission , Musk stated, “I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe, and I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy.” As a researcher of social media platforms , I find that Musk’s potential ownership of Twitter and his stated reasons for buying the company raise important issues. Those issues stem from the nature of the social media platform and what sets it apart from others. What makes Twitter unique Twitter occupies a unique niche. Its short chunks of text and threading foster real-time conversations among thousands of people, which
Read more

To reach net-zero emissions and remove CO2 from the air, scientists drawn up six priorities

Image
To reach net-zero emissions by 2050, global emissions must be cut faster and deeper than the world has yet managed. But even then, some hard-to-treat sources of pollution – in aviation, agriculture and cement making – may linger for longer than we would like. It will take time for clean alternatives to arrive and replace them. That means the world also needs to find and ramp up ways of taking CO₂ out of the atmosphere to stabilise the climate. Just meeting the UK’s net-zero target is likely to require the removal of 100 million tonnes of CO₂ a year , similar in size to current emissions from the country’s largest-emitting sector, road transport, but in reverse. The UK government’s announcement of £31.5 million (US$44.7 million) in support for research and development of carbon removal is welcome. And while trials of new tech will help, there are many social issues that need to be tackled if removing greenhouse gases is to succeed. Done right, carbon removal could be the perfect a
Read more

NASA is planning to partner with SpaceX to reboost the Hubble Telescope and extend its life

Image
The Hubble Space Telescope is one of the most important scientific achievements of the human species that has helped us understand space. It has been in orbit for over 30 years and has been feeding some of the most vital streams of information that has not only helped us steer our space exploration efforts, but also solve some of the more deep mysteries of the universe . NASA would love to extend its usable life for as long as possible. Unfortunately, for some years now, Hubble Space Telescope has been slipping out of its orbit. That is why, NASA is planning to team up with Elon Musk’s SpaceX and place it into a higher much more stable orbit. NASA, SpaceX and Jared Isaacman, a private astronaut with the Polaris Program, hosted a media teleconference on Thursday to announce a feasibility study that will look into sending a commercial Dragon spacecraft to reboost the Hubble Space Telescope . This will, in effect place the telescope into a higher and more stable orbit than it’s curren
Read more