On November 3, Indian National Congress claimed that Priyanka Gandhi had also been informed by WhatsApp via a message that her phone had been infected with Pegasus malware using the WhatsApp vulnerability that was revealed in May 2019. This is in addition to similar claims made by Praful Patel (National Congress Party) and Santosh Bhartiya (Janata Dal). However, a source familiar with the developments in identifying victims of Pegasus targeted through the WhatsApp vulnerability told MediaNama that there are no politicians on the list. This does not mean that Priyanka Gandhi was not infected with Pegasus. This simply means that her device was not infected using the WhatsApp vulnerability. The WhatsApp vulnerability basically allowed an attacker to plant Pegasus in the target's phone through a missed WhatsApp voice/video call. If there was an attempt to snoop on her using Pegasus, it happened via other means, which include and are not limited to: malicious links sent via messages or emails, malicious email attachments, or malicious files sent via instant messaging platforms. As a result, WhatsApp or Citizen Lab would not have contacted her. MediaNama has reached out to Citizen Lab for more clarification. What did WhatsApp say? “WhatsApp cares deeply about the privacy and security of our users. We have already contacted the users directly we have reason to believe were targeted. Users can contact us within the app and we will respond directly,” a WhatsApp spokesperson told MediaNama. Was Mamata Banerjee also attacked? NDTV reported that West Bengal Chief Minister…
