Of the journalists who received notifications, two stood out: Anand Mangnale and Ravi Nair of the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, a nonprofit alliance of dozens of independent, investigative newsrooms from around the world, said the report.
Team Clarion
NEW DLEHI — Journalists who reported allegations of corruption by Gautam Adani’s companies were targeted by the Israeli spyware Pegasus and the Narendra Modi government took action against Apple for warning messages to several prominent personalities about hacking of their iPhones by the state-sponsored actors, revealed a report by prominent international newspaper The Washington Post on Thursday.
According to the report, on Aug. 23, the OCCRP (Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project) emailed Adani seeking his comment for a story it would publish a week later alleging that his brother was part of a group that had secretly traded hundreds of millions of dollars worth of the Adani Group conglomerate’s public stock, possibly in violation of Indian securities law. A forensic analysis of Anand Mangnale’s phone, conducted by Amnesty International and shared with The Washington Post, found that an attacker infiltrated the device and planted Pegasus, the notorious spyware that was developed by Israeli company NSO Group and that NSO says is sold only to governments.
“The Modi government has never confirmed or denied using spyware, and it has refused to cooperate with a committee appointed by India’s Supreme Court to investigate whether it had. But two years ago, the Forbidden Stories journalism consortium, which included The Post, found that phones belonging to Indian journalists and political figures were infected with Pegasus, which grants attackers access to a device’s encrypted messages, camera and microphone,” said the report done by Gerry Shih and Joseph Menn.
In recent weeks, The Post, in collaboration with Amnesty, found fresh cases of infections among Indian journalists. Additional work by The Post and New York security firm iVerify found that opposition politicians had been targeted, adding to the evidence suggesting the Indian government’s use of powerful surveillance tools, said the report.
In October, more than 20 people who are critical of Modi government and Adani received Apple’s warnings.
“Of the journalists who received notifications, two stood out: Anand Mangnale and Ravi Nair of the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, a nonprofit alliance of dozens of independent, investigative newsrooms from around the world,” said the report.
Following the warning messages, the Modi government summoned representatives of Apple company and asked them to come up with the damage-control steps. The newspaper, which talked with the people who were part of the conversations between the government officials and Apple representatives, revealed that the US company was asked to come up with an alternative explanation to soften the political fallouts of the Apple warning.
“In private, according to three people with knowledge of the matter, senior Modi administration officials called Apple’s India representatives to demand that the company help soften the political impact of the warnings. They also summoned an Apple security expert from outside the country to a meeting in New Delhi, where government representatives pressed the Apple official to come up with alternative explanations for the warnings to users, the people said,” said the report.
According to the newspaper, the company officials stood by the warning messages but encouraged the journalist to report the warnings as false ones or it was issued in many countries.
The report also noted that while tensions between Apple and New Delhi have eased, the journalists who faced hacking attempts continue to experience pressure.
“In November and December, a third Indian journalist who has worked with OCCRP received phishing emails from a hacker who posed as a whistleblower seeking to leak corporate documents. The emails contained malware, according to OCCRP’s security team, which has not been able to identify the sender,” it said.
