Abdi: Former Outlook journalist, whose phone was compromised according to forensic analysis.Ħ. His phone was compromised by Pegasus, forensic analysis revealed.ĥ. Paranjoy Guha Thakurta: Former EPW editor, who now writes for Newsclick. The analysis showed that the phone was compromised by Pegasus.Ĥ. Siddharth Varadarajan: A founding editor of The Wire, his phone was forensically analysed. After a forensic analysis of his phone, Amnesty arrived at the conclusion that it had been compromised.ģ. Sushant Singh: Former Indian Express journalist who writes on national security. His phone was also forensically analysed and traces of Pegasus were found.Ģ. Forensic analysis was conducted on the phones of seven journalists, of which five showed traces of a successful infection by Pegasus. The Wire has confirmed the numbers of at least 40 journalists who were either targets or potential targets for surveillance. Note: The list will be updated as The Wire publishes new stories. Names that have been revealed by Pegasus Project partners but not by The Wire have not been included here. Until now, spread across several stories – all of which can be found here – The Wire has revealed the names of 161 people who were targets or potential targets for surveillance by clients of the NSO Group.
A person is classified as a target if their phones show evidence of an attempted or successful hack. A potential target is someone whose number appears on the list, but whose device has not been forensically analysed by Amnesty. Therefore, an important distinction has been made to differentiate the names that appear on the list. Unless evidence is established through a forensic examination, it is impossible to say if there was an attempted or successful hack.
To be sure, the presence of a number in the database does not imply that the person’s device was successfully targeted.
A small cross-section of these phones was forensically examined to find traces of Pegasus.Īmnesty International, in collaboration with The Wire, was able to forensically examine the phones of 10 Indians, all of which showed signs of either an attempted hack or a successful compromise. The news organisations working on Pegasus Project were independently able to identify the owners of over 1,500 numbers across at least 10 countries. Since the Israeli company says that the advanced spyware is only sold to “vetted governments”, it is safe to assume that these individuals were targets or potential targets of government or military agencies. The France-based media non-profit organisation Forbidden Stories had accessed a leaked database of 50,000 numbers who may have been targeted for surveillance by clients of NSO Group. Those on the list include heads of state, political figures, activists, students, lawyers and journalists, among others. New Delhi: Over the past few days, The Wire – in collaboration with 16 other media organisations – has been revealing the names of people who were either persons of interest or forensically identified as having been targeted by clients of the NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware.