WhatsApp informed the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology on September 5, 2019, that approximately 121 users in India may have been breached by Pegasus. MeitY revealed this in a written response (available below) to Lok Sabha MP Asaduddin Owaisi’s question raised in Parliament today. This completely undermines MeitY’s earlier statements that WhatsApp had not informed it about the scale of the breach. IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad’s earlier statement, wherein he sought a response from WhatsApp about the “kind of breach”, appears to be uninformed. MeitY's answer also called reports about government purchasing Pegasus misleading and classified them as “attempts to malign the Government of India”. Timeline of communication between MeitY and WhatsApp Meity’s answer finally gives a timeline for the communication between the MeitY, Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) and WhatsApp over the VoIP call vulnerability in WhatsApp that was exploited in May to plant Israeli spyware Pegasus in victims’ phones, which include 121 Indians: May 17, 2019: CERT-In published a vulnerability note, advising users with countermeasures regarding the WhatsApp vulnerability. May 20, 2019: WhatsApp reported the incident to CERT-In, stating that “WhatsApp had identified and promptly fixed a vulnerability that could enable an attacker to insert and execute code on mobile devices and that the vulnerability can no longer be exploited to carry out attacks”. September 5, 2019: WhatsApp updated CERT-In, informing them that “it is likely that devices of approximately one hundred and twenty one users in India may have been attempted to be reached” via…
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WhatsApp told MeitY in September that 121 Indians were targeted by Pegasus, MeitY reveals in Parliament
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