PEGASUS MALWARE REPORT

CONTEXT

The Supreme Court on August 25 said that the panel that it had constituted to look into the Pegasus issue had found no conclusive evidence of the Israeli origin spyware on the 29 phones it examined.

The court which said it was studying the detailed report from the panel, also noted that the central government had continued its stance of not cooperating with the probe panel.

 WHY WAS THE PANEL CONSTITUTED

• The Supreme Court had constituted the panel on October 27 last year after several pleas came before it for a probe into allegations that central agencies had used Pegasus to spy on politicians, journalists, and others.
• The center had at that time refused to submit a detailed affidavit on the allegations, as sought by the court.

ABOUT PANEL

• The panel consists of a three-member technical committee supervised by retired justice R.V.Raveendran.
• Members-Naveen Kumar Chaudhary of National Forensic Sciences University of Gandhinagar
• Prabaharan P. of Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham of Kerala.
• Ashwin Anil Gumaste of IIT Bombay.
• The panel informed the court in an interim report in May this year that it had come up with its protocols and software to test phones for Pegasus infection.

PANEL’S REPORT

• Justice Ramana, who was heading the three-judge Bench on the case,
• The Panel had been working on two key aspects-
• first, technical details of the probe into the allegations of Pegasus use
• And second the enhancement of current laws surrounding digital surveillance, cyber security, and privacy rights
• On the first aspect, as per CJI 's reading of the report, five of the 29 phones that were submitted for examination had shown signs of malware infection, but not necessarily Pegasus.
• The report itself has three parts: the technical details of the phone analysis, the report of the technical committee, and the report of the supervising judge.

CENTRE’S STANCE

• The center had earlier refused the Supreme Court’s order to submit a detailed affidavit regarding the use of Pegasus, arguing that such a public affidavit would compromise national security.
• The center had also wanted the panel probing the issue to be under it, which the apex court denied citing the possibility of bias

HOW WAS PEGASUS USED IN INDIA

• Reports that appeared in July 2021 from the Pegasus Project, which includes The wire in India, The Guardian in the UK, and The Washington Post in the US, said that in India at least 40 journalists, cabinet Ministers, and holders of constitutional positions were possibly subjected to surveillance using Pegasus.
• The reports were based on a database of about 50,000 phone numbers accessed by the Paris-based nonprofit Forbidden stories and Amnesty International.
• According to The Guardian, Amnesty International’s security lab tested 67 of the phones linked to the Indian numbers in that database and found that 23 were successfully infected and 14 showed signs of attempted penetration.
• Since Pegasus is graded as a cyber weapon and can only be sold to authorized government entities as per Israeli law; most reports have suggested that the governments in these countries are the clients.