India seeks answers from WhasApp after cyberespionage

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NEW DELHI: India demanded answers from WhatsApp over a snooping scandal Thursday after coming under fire from critics who accused authorities of using malware installed on the Facebook-owned messaging service to spy on citizens.WhatsApp has filed a lawsuit in the United States against Israeli technology firm NSO Group, accusing it of using the hugely popular instant messaging platform to conduct cyberespionage on nearly 1,400 journalists, diplomats, dissidents and human right activists worldwide. The Israeli firm has denied journalists and activists were targeted and said that it only licenses its software to governments for “fighting crime and terror”. Nearly two dozen activists, lawyers and journalists were targeted in India — WhatsApp´s biggest market with some 400 million active users — according to Indian media reports. The Indian Express reported WhatsApp confirmed a number of Indian users had been targeted by the Pegasus spyware, which installed itself on their devices and relayed back data to the hackers.New Delhi has asked Whatsapp to “explain the kind of breach and what it is doing to safeguard the privacy of millions of Indian citizens,” information and technology minister Ravi Shankar Prasad wrote on Twitter, denying the government had used the malware to spy on its citizens.

from The News International - World https://ift.tt/2WuVBIg

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