Tag: spying

  • Huawei faces lawsuit after allegedly spying on Pakistani citizens through stolen tech

    Huawei faces lawsuit after allegedly spying on Pakistani citizens through stolen tech

    Huawei has been sued in California federal court for creating a “backdoor” that allowed it to collect sensitive data “important to Pakistan’s national security”, reports Reuters.

    Business Efficiency Solutions (BES), a California-based IT consultant company, filed a complaint against the China-based tech giant on Wednesday, August 11.

    According to the complaint, Huawei subcontracted with BES in 2016 for its $150 million bid to develop software for a Pakistani government programme providing new technology for police and law enforcement in Lahore. BES said it created software for the project that collects data from government agencies, controls access to buildings, monitors social media and manages drones, among other things.

    Huawei officials allegedly demanded that BES send this information to the company in China for testing, and BES said it agreed to the demand but terminated its authorisation to use the technology after Huawei revoked its access to the testing laboratory.

    The complaint said Huawei has yet to return any of the confidential software design tools or uninstall the software, as BES said it had agreed to.

    BES said Huawei later demanded it install its data-aggregation software – used by Pakistani law enforcement to collect and analyse “sensitive data from different sources and government agencies” – in its Chinese lab, “this time not merely for testing purposes but with full access to data at the Lahore Safe City project.” BES said it agreed, under threat of termination and withheld payments, after Huawei said it had approval from the Pakistani government.

    Huawei has yet to respond to the lawsuit filed by BES through its legal team. BES also did not share any more information beyond the case that it filed in the federal court.

    The IT consulting firm also accused Huawei of stealing the “trade secrets, and other intellectual properties in its possessions after officials of the China tech company demanded it for testing.”

    Up until now, the lawsuit alleged that Huawei has not returned the software design tools to BES.

    Moreover, BES said that it only allowed Huawei to use the software with full access as the latter threatened that they will not be paid, which the Chinese giant has yet to do for some of the software in the project.

    Huawei is a Chinese firm that has been banned in the United States (US) after it was accused of being a security risk. Thus, Google forcibly removed its services from the devices of the Chinese phone maker.

    However, Huawei recently decided to live without Google by debuting its own operating system across all of its devices.

  • ‘PM Khan’s phone does not have messages of Gujarat massacre like Modi’: Fawad

    ‘PM Khan’s phone does not have messages of Gujarat massacre like Modi’: Fawad

    Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Fawad Chaudhry, while speaking on Geo News’ programme ‘Jirga’, said, “Two days prior to the story of Pegasus spyware being published, I received a letter from The Guardian revealing that there was a list of phone numbers that had been hacked. Three numbers previously used by Prime Minister Imran Khan were also in the list.”

    Fawad said that the letter further added that he needed to confirm whether the numbers included in the list belonged to PM Khan or not.

    Fawad said that a team was being put together by the government, who would do the forensics to verify whether the premier’s phone was hacked or not. Only then will the government be able to tell if the attempt to hack the phone was successful or not.

    “It is confirmed that an attempt to hack the phone was made,” said Fawad.

    On being asked by Saleem Safi that if the phone was indeed hacked and the Indians did get the data from the premier’s phone, what implications would it have for the country, Fawad replied, ” PM Khan’s phone did not have messages of Gujarat massacre like Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. His phone does not have any orders of murder in it.”

    Fawad condemned how Modi and his government had hacked the phones of Indian journalists, judges, his own government officials, and other world leaders and said that the United Nations must intervene in this regard.

    Fawad Chaudhry added that the Foreign Office has taken notice of India’s use of Israeli spyware, Pegasus, to hack Prime Minister Imran Khan’s phone and had already said: “We call on the relevant UN bodies to thoroughly investigate the matter, bring the facts to light, and hold the Indian perpetrators to account.”

    When questioned about the meeting between Imran Khan and Narendra Modi before he came into power and whether it was discussed with the then government, Fawad responded that PM Khan’s meeting was public and the media was present. Fawad criticised Nawaz Sharif’s meeting with Afghan National Security Adviser (NSA) Hamdullah Mohib in London and said this was news shared with the Afghan media.

    “I won’t call Nawaz Sharif a traitor but it was a very irresponsible act by him,” added Fawad.

    Earlier this week, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader Nawaz Sharif was met by Afghan National Security Adviser Hamdullah Mohib and State Minister for Peace Sayed Sadat Naderi.

    The National Security Council of Afghanistan (NSCA) gave an update about the meeting on Twitter Saturday, saying that the Afghan state minister for peace and NSA discussed “matters of mutual interest” with the former Pakistan prime minister.

    Nawaz Sharif’s meeting faced extreme criticism from the government.

  • ‘The world has seen true face of so-called Indian democracy,’ Pakistan demands answers

    ‘The world has seen true face of so-called Indian democracy,’ Pakistan demands answers

    In a statement released by the Foreign Office regarding India’s use of Israeli spyware, Pegasus, to hack Prime Minister Imran Khan’s phone, Foreign Office Spokesperson Zahid Hafeez stated, “We call on the relevant UN bodies to thoroughly investigate the matter, bring the facts to light, and hold the Indian perpetrators to account.”

    The statement further said, “We condemn in strongest possible terms India’s state-sponsored, continuing and widespread surveillance and spying operations in clear breach of global norms of responsible state behaviour.”

    “Keeping a clandestine tab on dissenting voices is a long-standing textbook ploy of the RSS-BJP regime to commit human rights atrocities in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) and peddle disinformation against Pakistan,” read the statement.

    “The world has seen the true face of the so-called Indian ‘democracy’. We are closely following these revelations and will bring the Indian abuses to the attention of appropriate global platforms.”

    The recent revelations by Pegasus Project show that the Indian government had targeted Prime Minister Imran Khan’s phone for surveillance in 2019. Analysis of the more than 1,000 mostly Indian phone numbers selected for potential targeting by using Pegasus spyware strongly indicates intelligence agencies within the Indian government were behind the selection.

  • 40 Indian journalists were secretly spied on by their govt, Pak shows concern

    40 Indian journalists were secretly spied on by their govt, Pak shows concern

    The phone numbers of over 40 Indian journalists appeared on a leaked list of potential targets for surveillance, and forensic tests have confirmed that some of them were successfully snooped upon by an unidentified agency using Pegasus spyware, a private Israeli firm, reports The Wire.

    Forensic tests conducted as part of this project on a small cross-section of phones associated with these numbers revealed clear signs of targeting by Pegasus spyware in 37 phones, of which 10 are Indian.

    Indian ministers, government officials, and Opposition leaders also figure in the list of people whose phones may have been compromised by the spyware, claimed The Wire.

    The leaked data includes the numbers of top journalists at big media houses like the Hindustan Times, including executive editor Shishir Gupta, India Today, Network18, The Hindu, and Indian Express.
    The leaked database was accessed by Paris-based media nonprofit Forbidden Stories and Amnesty International and shared with The Wire, Le Monde, The Guardian, Washington Post Die Zeit, Suddeutsche Zeitung, and 10 other Mexican, Arab and European news organisations as part of a collaborative investigation called the ‘Pegasus Project’.

    Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry tweeted: “Extremely concerned on news reports emerging from @guardiannews that Indian Govt used Israeli software to spy on Journalists, political opponents, and politicians, unethical policies of #ModiGovt have dangerously polarised India and the region… more details are emerging.”

    The Pegasus Project, a consortium of news organisations that analysed this list, has reason to believe that the data is indicative of potential targets identified in advance of surveillance attempts. The presence of a phone number in the data does alone not reveal whether a device was infected with Pegasus or subject to an attempted hack – technical examination of the phone’s data is needed for that.

    The important factor is how the results of the forensic analysis threw up shows the sequential connection between the time and date a phone number is entered in the list and the beginning of surveillance. The gap usually ranges between a few minutes and a couple of hours. In some cases, including forensic tests conducted for two India numbers, the time between a number appearing on the list and the successful detection of a trace of Pegasus infection is just seconds.

    Pegasus is sold by the Israeli company, NSO Group, which says it only offers its spyware to “vetted governments”. The company refuses to make its list of customers public but the presence of Pegasus infections in India, and the range of persons that may have been selected for targeting, strongly indicate that the agency operating the spyware on Indian numbers is an official Indian one.

    NSO disputes the claim that the leaked list is linked in any way to the functioning of its spyware. In a letter to The Wire and Pegasus Project partners, the company initially said it had “good reason to believe” that the leaked data was “not a list of numbers targeted by governments using Pegasus”, but instead, maybe part of “a larger list of numbers that might have been used by NSO Group customers for other purposes”.

    However, the forensic testing of targeted phones has confirmed the use of Pegasus spyware against some of the Indian numbers on this list and has also established that this highly obstructive form of surveillance – technically illegal under Indian law as it involves hacking – is still being used to spy on journalists and others.

    A majority of the numbers identified in the list were geographically concentrated in 10 country clusters: India, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Morocco, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

  • India reacts to Pakistan’s assertion, says ’embassy officials were caught red-handed while spying’

    India reacts to Pakistan’s assertion, says ’embassy officials were caught red-handed while spying’

    India has rejected Pakistan’s contention that two high commission staffers were detained on unsubstantiated charges and tortured, people familiar with developments told Hindustan Times, adding that the officials “were caught red-handed while indulging in spying”.

    New Delhi on Sunday expelled two junior officials of the Pakistan High Commission after they were detained during an operation by the Delhi Police and Military Intelligence while allegedly trying to obtain classified documents on security installations.

    The officials were identified as Abid Hussain Abid, 42, an assistant in the Pakistani mission, and Mohammad Tahir Khan, 44, a clerk.

    Pakistan condemned India’s decision to declare the two officials persona non grata and to expel them, saying they were detained on false and unsubstantiated charges. A statement from Pakistan’s Foreign Office (FO) also contended that the two men were tortured and threatened to “accept false charges” despite identifying themselves as diplomatic staff.

    The FO said the Indian action was in clear violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations as well as the norms of diplomatic conduct.

    “The High Commission of Pakistan in New Delhi has always worked within the parameters of international law and diplomatic norms. The Indian action is clearly aimed at shrinking diplomatic space for the working of Pakistan High Commission,” it said.

    The FO said that the Indian ploy to heighten tensions would fail in diverting attention from the ongoing internal and external issues faced by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government or from the worsening situation and gross human rights violations being perpetrated by the Indian forces in occupied Jammu and Kashmir.

    It again called on the world to take note of the Indian designs and play its role in ensuring peace and security in South Asia.

    “The assertions of the Pakistan FO are false. The two officials were caught red-handed while indulging in espionage activities,” said one of the people cited above, speaking on condition of anonymity.

    “They did not disclose their identity that they were high commission officials. When they were taken into custody and questioned, they confessed to indulging in espionage and also informed that they were high commission officials,” the person added.

    The Pakistani mission was immediately informed and the two men were handed over, the person said.

    “They were never subjected to any torture. They have also undergone medical examinations. Pakistan appears to be making false accusations and possibly creating ground for some tit for tat reaction and torture of Indian officials in Islamabad,” they said.