(Image source from: indiatoday.in)

Whatsapp told the Government, among 121 WhatsApp users targeted in India, 20 WhatsApp users were breached and this attack was of a high order of complexity and sophistication. They had a fraudulent motto to extract data from the user's mobile phones.

Whatsapp is investigating the attack and it hasn’t been able to figure out the data that has been accessed on the devices of the targeted users.  

Based on the information given to the Parliamentary Committee, the government stated that the users were warned about the attack on October 29th.

Whatsapp had been looking into this issue from September and it hinted the Government on November 18th that 20 users data might be at stake. Further, it added, the intended victims are global activists, of which few of them are Journalists.

In May, Whatsapp software didn’t see Pegasus Software as a risk, it told the Government “ We believe that a select number of individuals were targeted - this is not a security incident that would have affected a large number of users”.

Later, Whatsapp told India’s cybersecurity agent that it had fixed a recent issue that would make it easy for attackers to implement code on mobiles.

As per the investigation conducted by Whatsapp, an Israel-based company NSO Group had developed this spyware with Pegasus spyware, their target was to reach 1,400 users and they could get to 121 users in India. This was told to the Lower House of Parliament by the ministry.

By Neha Makhija