New Delhi: Congress General Secretary (Organisation) KC Venugopal said Saturday that his iPhone was at the receiving end of a “targeted mercenary spyware attack”. His claim came three days after Iltija Mufti, the daughter of former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti, and Pushparaj Deshpande, the founder of Samruddha Bharat Foundation, a socio-political platform, alleged that they had been targeted by Pegasus spyware.
Venugopal, who is a close aide of Leader of the Opposition (LoP) Rahul Gandhi, made the allegation based on an alert from Apple. In 2021, a global collaborative investigation had revealed that Gandhi, among other top Opposition leaders, could have been the victim of a Pegasus spyware attack.
Venugopal, who won the Lok Sabha election from Kerala’s Alappuzha constituency, posted on X (formerly Twitter) that his iPhone had been targeted by spyware, attaching a screenshot of the threat notification from Apple. He alleged that the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) government at the Centre was behind the surveillance attempt.
Thank you PM Modi ji for sending your favourite malicious spyware on my phone also!
Apple has been kind enough to intimate me about this special present of yours!
Let’s be clear, the Modi government is acting in a criminal and unconstitutional manner, going after political… pic.twitter.com/VrwF9TGdek
— K C Venugopal (@kcvenugopalmp) July 13, 2024
The notification said that this was the second time in nine months that Apple had detected an attack against his phone. It had previously sent him a notification on 30 October, 2023, when MPs from other opposition parties including the Trinamool Congress’s (TMC’s) Mahua Moitra, and Priyanka Chaturvedi of the Shiv Sena (UBT) also received similar threat notifications on their iPhones.
Investigation on alleged Pegasus spyware attacks
On its support portal, Apple explains that “individually targeted attacks of such exceptional cost and complexity have historically been associated with state actors, including private companies developing mercenary spyware on their behalf, such as Pegasus from the NSO Group.”
In 2021, a global collaborative investigative project had sparked a major political storm in India over reports that a large number of opposition leaders, two sitting union ministers, a former election commissioner, social activists, journalists, and businesspersons were targets of the Pegasus spyware developed by Israeli cyber-intelligence firm NSO Group.
In 2021, the Supreme Court had formed a committee comprising technical experts to look into the allegations of surveillance using Pegasus. In August 2022, the committee had noted that no conclusive evidence was found about spyware targets on the phones, but said the government had not cooperated.
(Edited by Radifah Kabir)