Phones Of Five French Ministers Infected By Pegasus Malware: Report
NDTV
French security services detected the software while inspecting the phones, with the intrusions believed to have taken place in 2019 and 2020, according to the report from Mediapart on Friday.
The mobile phones of at least five French ministers and a diplomatic advisor to President Emmanuel Macron were infected by the Israeli-made Pegasus spyware, sources told AFP on Friday, confirming a report by the Mediapart investigative website.
French security services detected the software while inspecting the phones, with the intrusions believed to have taken place in 2019 and 2020, according to the report from Mediapart on Friday.
Pegasus, made by the Israeli firm NSO Group, can switch on a phone's camera or microphone and harvest its data, and was at the centre of a storm in July after a list of about 50,000 potential surveillance targets worldwide was leaked to the media.
The media consortium behind the revelations, including The Washington Post, The Guardian and France's Le Monde, reported at the time that one of Macron's phone numbers and those of many French cabinet ministers were on the leaked list of potential targets.
