Dirty Tricks by State

The Supreme Court on Pegasus: Two Short Steps Away From the Truth  Siddharth Vaedarajan https://thewire.in/law/pegasus-spyware-supreme-court-truth Insist on individual affidavits from the home minister, the NSA and other key officials, and allow a review by reputed organisations of the technical committee’s findings.

what is striking about the technical committee’s report – or rather the broad summary the CJI provided in court – is the tentativeness of its core finding. We need to remind ourselves that the intelligence agencies of France and Belgium, as well as the European Commission and a United Kingdom court have all examined phones which were first reported by the Pegasus Project media consortium as infected – and confirmed those findings. Why India alone should be an outlier is not clear.

Prime Time With Ravish Kumar | "Government Didn't Cooperate" - Supreme Court Cites Report In Pegasus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HKJBKBHi0k Aug 25, 2022  29 phones were examined and malware was found in five, but there's no conclusive proof of Pegasus spyware in them, a Supreme Court bench led by Chief Justice NV Ramana said today, adding that the committee it appointed to investigate the issue said the Indian government did not cooperate in its probe. "Centre has not cooperated," it said. (Audio in Hindi)

Supreme Court says no conclusive proof of Pegasus spyware in phones examined https://indianexpress.com/article/india/supreme-court-pegasus-spyware-case-8110566/   Ananthakrishnan G   August 26, 2022 
“In 5 phones they found some malware, but it doesn’t mean it is a malware of Pegasus,” said CJI N V Ramana, who is heading the three-judge bench, after perusing the report submitted by the three-member technical committee. 

https://pegasus-india-investigation.in/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Final-Supreme-court-order-Oct2021.pdf

https://pegasus-india-investigation.in/depositions/anand-statement/ Cyber security expert Anand’s deposition before Justice Raveendran Cmt is chilling in its evidential expose of how extensively and deeply Pegasus has been used by Indian intelligence community to target dissenters, and those that Modi-Shah regime does not like, or wants to demonise. For those still fence sitting on the case that Modi-Shah are ramming through not merely a surveillance state, but are paving the highway into a fascist state, this is a must watch deposition. Not to worry about this and not to be revolted by how vulnerable - not merely those targeted - but we all are, would result in rapidly slipping into a situation where worse softwares will becoming normative, as is already the case with capitalist-majoritarian-‘communist’ China.

One year of the Pegasus Project: Hacking Tools Multiplying Daily, Threat Growing — Sandrine Rigaud https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4x_A_jPYko&t=56s
 Jul 19, 2022 On July 18, 2021, revelations of the “Pegasus Project” shocked the world. The product of a collaborative investigation by multiple media organisations including The Wire in India, the Guardian in the UK and Washington Post, details of a chilling surveillance attack emerged. A zero click hacking tool called Pegasus had been developed by the Israel based NSO Group. Governments around the world had bought and were using Pegasus. In India, investigations revealed that several activists, academics, journalists, opposition members and lawyers were targeted using Pegasus by exploiting a vulnerability in the WhatsApp platform. The attack is invisible. Once “infected”, your phone becomes your worst enemy. From within your pocket, it instantly delivers your private conversations, personal photos, almost every detail about you. Amnesty International’s Security Lab used digital forensic tests to confirm evidence of targeting and infections on scores of phones around the world. Today a year has passed since the revelations. The Pegasus Project was a collaboration by journalists from 17 media organizations in 10 countries, coordinated by Forbidden Stories. Mitali Mukherjee spoke with Sandrine Rigaud editor in chief of Forbidden Stories and the one who coordinated the “Pegasus Project” on the threats and challenges that still remain.

Forget Pegasus, new spyware 'Hermit' now being used by governments Hermit is a modular spyware that hides its malicious capabilities in packages downloaded after it's deployed  https://www.deccanherald.com/international/world-news-politics/forget-pegasus-new-spyware-hermit-now-being-used-by-governments-1119178.html  Jun 18 2022

Cyber-security researchers have unearthed a new enterprise-grade Android spyware. "Based on our analysis, the spyware, which we named 'Hermit' is likely developed by Italian spyware vendor RCS Lab and Tykelab Srl, a telecommunications solutions company we suspect to be operating as a front company,"
RCS Lab, a known developer that has been active for over three decades, operates in the same market as Pegasus developer NSO Group Technologies and Gamma Group, which created FinFisher. RCS Lab has engaged with military and intelligence agencies in Pakistan, Chile, Mongolia, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Myanmar and Turkmenistan.

Collectively branded as "lawful intercept" companies, they claim to only sell to customers with legitimate use for surveillanceware, such as intelligence and law enforcement agencies. "In reality, such tools have often been abused under the guise of national security to spy on business executives, human rights activists, journalists, academics and government officials,"

Hermit is a modular spyware that hides its malicious capabilities in packages downloaded after it's deployed. These modules, along with the permissions the core apps have, enable Hermit to exploit a rooted device, record audio and make and redirect phone calls, as well as collect data such as call logs, contacts, photos, device location and SMS messages.