"Indian journalist targeted with NSO spyware, anti-corruption group says", 7 November 2023

Government-backed hackers tried to plant spyware made by NSO Group on the iPhone of an Indian journalist working for the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) in August, the organization’s co-founder said on Monday.

Analysis of the journalist's phone showed an infiltration attempt on Aug. 23, OCCRP's co-founder Drew Sullivan told Reuters. The journalist, Anand Mangnale, was among a series of people in India who received alerts from Apple (AAPL.O) last week warning them that they had been targeted by "state-sponsored" hackers trying to remotely access their iPhones.

Apple's alerts did not identify the government behind the hacks or the spyware used.

Sullivan said an internal forensic investigation tied the intrusion effort against Mangnale's phone to Israeli firm NSO's Pegasus hacking tool. The spyware allows hackers sweeping access to the targets' smartphones, allowing them to record calls, intercept messages and transform the phones into portable listening devices...

...Apple's recent round of alerts reached more than 20 people in India, most of them opposition politicians, igniting a fresh storm of allegations that New Delhi is using hacking tools against its own citizens just months before a national Indian election is slated to begin.

The Indian government has denied such allegations and last week Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said that the government was investigating the complaints of phone hacking. The Indian Embassy in Washington and Indian government officials in New Delhi didn't return messages seeking comment on OCCRP's allegation that its India-based reporter was hacked, or on the status of the government's investigation into the hacking alerts.