From Pricklypear in US to Ganges in India

NEW DELHI: Israel's NSO Group, whose spyware was behind the cyber-attacks that infected mobile phones, allegedly used operators with codenames such Pricklypear, Ganges and AK-47 for their targets in 45 countries between 2016 and 2018, says a report.
The report, prepared by Toronto-based Citizens Lab shows that apart from Android-based WhatsApp, even iPhone and other phones were allegedly subjected to similar surveillance for a two-year period over regular text messages.
These operators in these countries including US, India, Bahrain, Pakistan were allegedly involved in spying, surveillance operations and cross-border surveillance operations.
One of the prominent operator was called Pricklypear in the US and Mexico while the other one that was operating in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Brazil and Hong Kong was code-named Ganges. The report said that “operators” used even used names such as Pearl in Bahrain, Falcon in UAE to AK 47 in Mozambique.
“We identified five operators that we believe are focusing on Asia. One operator, Ganges, used a politically themed domain signpetition[.]co, (sic),” the Citizen Lab report said.
Citizen Lab, which studies network surveillance that pose threats to human rights, adds a big rider that “while some NSO customers (operators) may be using Pegasus spyware as part of lawful criminal or national security investigations, at least six countries with significant Pegasus operations have a public history of abusing spyware to target civil society”
The report is based on basis of SMS and web-generated links sent to several people between August 2016 and August 2018.
The lab report has said that the “operator” that engaged the Israel firm and generated a website domain name forRead More – Source