Pegasus Affair

"India Bought Pegasus": Spying Scandal Resurfaces After New York Times Report |  Reality Check Feb 3, 2022   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdpSfiKkzw8  

Pegasus Snooping Scandal: The New York Times reported that the Indian government bought the Pegasus spyware in 2017 as part of a multi-billion-dollar defence deal, reigniting the spying scandal. The opposition is on the warpath, with Congress' Rahul Gandhi accusing the government of treason.

< https://youtu.be/wuK1r7IWwzE  >

Transcript India's 2017 Pegasus Deal With Israel Involved Top Intel Leaders    https://thewire.in/rights/transcript-india-israel-2017-pegasus-deal-siddharth-varadarajan-ronen-bergman-interview  Israeli investigative reporter Ronen Bergman speaks at length about the explosive story he co-authored in the New York Times on the sale of Pegasus spyware around the world, including to India.

Sukla Sen highlights Three takeaways:

I. From the Israeli side the clinching of the contact (for sale of Pegasus) requires direct involvement of the Prime Minister. That's a strong clue as to what is the level of representation on the Indian side.

II. A The system sold to India enables it to monitor a number of phones -  the maximum number lies somewhere between 10 and 50, concurrently.
    B. The capacity is determined/fixed at the time of initial purchase itself and cannot be scaled up later.
    C The contact is renewable (every year or at the end of the term).
    D. In the Indian case, it's a multi-year contact.

III. The system has to be installed (onsite) by the NSO engineers. They're to provide periodic maintenance services (onsite). Maybe also assistance to operate in some selected cases.

Extracts: by s sen

(on cost to India) I would say it’s a few dozens of millions… of the $2 billion, the [cost of purchasing] Pegasus in terms of [the] real number is not the majority whatsoever, this is, they were like missiles that are far, far more expensive...

The NSO engineers need to be physically present on-site to install the system, test it, and then from time to time come and do the maintenance. In this case, Indian intelligence service, which was the entity that purchased the Pegasus – the overall connection is also with the involvement of the agency in Israel that is in charge of running secret intelligence and political relationships, which is the Mossad.

It’s not [a] license given by the ministry of defence. The MOD is giving a license to sell Pegasus according to some kind of a breakdown of details and capabilities. But besides that, in the commercial negotiation between NSO and Indian entities or Indian agencies, it’s very important to, and this has a significant impact on the pricing, different kinds of capabilities of the Pegasus, one of them – and most important per bandwidth capability, power and price – is how many licenses are sold. License is the ability to monitor one phone at the concurrent time. And this is … as far as I know, those [which] were sold to India, were I think between – I don’t remember what was the exact number – but it’s between 10 and 50. So each one can, it depends on what was decided, can monitor between 10 phones up to 50 phones.

Other comments:

Ronen Bergman asserted that NSO is now on the verge of extinction.. hinting that the tech is out there or that some other entity corporate, State, or perhaps rogue entity could make use of this. So the horse's shit would hit the fan, and so some serious work needs to be done to outlaw and prevent this kind of disruption. Nuremberg3.0 is called for. It also became quite clear that it was not a software which could be sold and distributed on a disk. It is engineered from perhaps some base tools and custom-made for each client, contract by contract. 

He said that the NSO has perhaps deliberately engineered things in such a way that they don't know the content of the invasion.. mainly because their clients themselves would not want it and also because of deniability.. true they have a log of the numbers and the attempts to hack.. and they have a front door access based on dual-both sides concurrence for maintenance.

Ronen Bergman No client of NSO would want a back door, because then they can be a backdoor to a back door. I was impressed that he was following the story right from the inception of NSO and is clear that NSO is near extinction.. but the tech lives on.. perhaps large chunks of the tech has already been sold or new corporations setup .. perhaps some hackers are already on the job

India Bought Pegasus as Part of Larger $2 Billion Deal with Israel in 2017, Claims 'NYT' Report https://thewire.in/tech/india-bought-pegasus-israel-nyt-report  29 Jan 2022

According to the NYT report, India’s access to Pegasus was sealed in 2017. The story claims that “Pegasus and a missile system” were the “centrepieces” of a broader defence package worth $2 billion.

In July 2021, a consortium of international media organisations including The Wire reported on the usage of Pegasus in countries across the world. In India, over 10 cases of Pegasus infection were found through forensic analysis conducted by Amnesty International’s Security Lab.  (https://thewire.in/government/project-pegasus-journalists-ministers-activists-phones-spying) 

NYT Report Says India Bought Pegasus. Did Modi Govt Lie To The Supreme Court and the Parliament?   https://youtu.be/n_qPTlvch_g?t=105  Jan 29, 2022

"Once Congress leader Rahul Gandhi had given the slogan of Chowkidar hi chor hai, which meant the watchman is a thief. Now, the oppositgion is taking on the modi govt by asking whether the Chowkidar is a Jasoos. Which means whether the Watchman is a spy. The question has arisen after the report in International publication about the Pegasus spyware and how countries/ governments around the world are in a race to acquire the world's most powerful cyber weapon.
At a time when the ghost of Pegasus is still haunting the Modi govt and a case in this regard is still pending in the Supreme Court, the New York Times has published a report which reveals that India did buy the spyware. and the deal to buy NSO made Spyware was struck during the 2017 visit of PM Modi to Israel.
The explosive revelations have led to fresh questions surrounding the govt's claim about Pegasus and snooping. The opposition is up in arms. the report comes at a time when five crucial states including Uttar pradesh and Punjab go for polls.

The Battle for the World’s Most Powerful Cyberweapon  By Ronen Bergman and Mark Mazzetti https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/28/magazine/nso-group-israel-spyware.html  Jan. 28, 2022

NSO’s products seemed to solve one of the biggest problems facing law-enforcement and intelligence agencies in the 21st century: that criminals and terrorists had better technology for encrypting their communications than investigators had to decrypt them. The criminal world had gone dark even as it was increasingly going global...

.. Pegasus was designed to be unable to hack into American numbers. Then the Pegasus engineers, as they had in previous demonstrations around the world, opened their interface, entered the number of the phone and began an attack. ... This version of Pegasus was “zero click” — unlike more common hacking software, it did not require users to click on a malicious attachment or link — so the Americans monitoring the phones could see no evidence of an ongoing breach. ..

..Israel, wary of angering Americans by abetting the efforts of other countries to spy on the United States, had required NSO to program Pegasus so it was incapable of targeting U.S. numbers.  

...NSO had recently offered the F.B.I. a workaround. During a presentation to officials in Washington, the company demonstrated a new system, called Phantom, that could hack any number in the United States that the F.B.I. decided to target.

Another company, called CommuniTake, that offered cellphone tech-support workers the ability to take control of their customers’ devices — with permission. 

If they (law-enforcement and intelligence agencies) could control the device itself, though, they could collect the data before it was encrypted. CommuniTake had already figured out how to control the devices. All the partners needed was a way to do so without permission.

For Israel, the weapons trade has always been central to the country’s sense of national survival. It was a major driver of economic growth, which in turn funded further military research and development. 

In July 2017, Narendra Modi, who won office on a platform of Hindu nationalism, became the first Indian prime minister to visit Israel. For decades, India had maintained a policy of what it called “commitment to the Palestinian cause,” and relations with Israel were frosty. The Modi visit, however, was notably cordial, complete with a carefully staged moment of him and Prime Minister Netanyahu walking together barefoot on a local beach. They had reason for the warm feelings. Their countries had agreed on the sale of a package of sophisticated weapons and intelligence gear worth roughly $2 billion — with Pegasus and a missile system as the centerpieces. Months later, Netanyahu made a rare state visit to India. And in June 2019, India voted in support of Israel at the U.N.’s Economic and Social Council to deny observer status to a Palestinian human rights organization, a first for the nation.