Paris, France:
The mobile phones of at least 5 French ministers and a diplomatic advisor to President Emmanuel Macron have been infected by the Israeli-made Pegasus spyware, sources told AFP on Friday, confirming a report by the Mediapart investigative web-site.
French safety services detected the application whilst inspecting the phones, with the intrusions believed to have taken location in 2019 and 2020, according to the report from Mediapart on Friday.
Pegasus, made by the Israeli firm NSO Group, can switch on a phone’s camera or microphone and harvest its information, and was at the centre of a storm in July following a list of about 50,000 possible surveillance targets worldwide was leaked to the media.
The media consortium behind the revelations, which includes The Washington Post, The Guardian and France’s Le Monde, reported at the time that one of Macron’s phone numbers and these of quite a few French cabinet ministers have been on the leaked list of possible targets.
French authorities declined to comment on Friday.
The 5 ministers targeted are Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer, Territorial Cohesion Minister Jacqueline Gourault, Agriculture Minister Julien Denormandie, Housing Minister Emmanuelle Wargon and Overseas Territories Minister Sebastien Lecornu, Mediapart mentioned.
Two French sources with expertise of the investigation confirmed the veracity of the report, whilst asking not to be identified by name since they have been not authorised to speak to the media.
“My phone is one of those checked out by the national IT systems security agency, but I haven’t yet heard anything about the investigation so I cannot comment at this stage,” Wargon told the L’Opinion web-site Friday.
One of her aides told AFP that “the minister doesn’t have access to any state secrets, so we can’t really see the point of spying on her.”
In July, Le Monde reported that proof of an attempted hacking was identified on the phone of the former atmosphere minister and close Macron ally Francois de Rugy, with the try allegedly originating in Morocco.
Morocco’s intelligence services have been also accused of becoming behind the hacking of journalists in France, but the kingdom’s government has denied the claims and launched legal action alleging defamation.
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