Another Pegasus-like snooping tool used in 10 countries: Researchers

Nearly two years after the Pegasus controversy, researchers at Microsoft and digital rights group Citizen Lab have suggested the use of another Israeli spyware by governments in at least 10 countries.

Microsoft found traces of a spyware created by surveillance firm QuaDream on older Apple phones while Citizen Lab tracked down the victims. They issued separate reports, indicating that the spyware has been used against journalists, opposition figures and advocacy organisations across these countries.  

Citizen Lab found QuaDream servers in Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Ghana, Israel, Mexico, Romania, Singapore, UAE and Uzbekistan, but it refused to name the victims, saying that those people would come forward when they are ready.

Notably, QuaDream was set up in 2016 by former employees of the NSO – the company behind Pegasus. Like NSO, QuaDream sells its spyware to government agencies. However, it doesn’t have a visible corporate presence like its technological rival.

In 2021, the Pegasus Project, a collaborative investigation into who had been targeted by the software, revealed that a number of phones in India had potentially been infected, including those of prominent journalists and senior politicians such as opposition Congress party leader Rahul Gandhi.

The Indian government has declined to confirm or deny whether it purchased Pegasus software. In July, 2021, the country’s information technology minister dismissed the reports as “sensationalism” and called them an attempt “to malign Indian democracy and its well-established institutions.”

Last year, Newslaundry had reported that India’s Intelligence Bureau, the country’s main domestic intelligence agency, bought hardware from the Israeli spyware firm NSO Group that matches the description of equipment used elsewhere to deploy the company’s flagship Pegasus software, import documents show.

The finding bolsters the claim, reported by the New York Times, that the Indian government purchased Pegasus spyware in 2017 as part of a major arms deal with Israel.