New Delhi: Perturbed about the Israeli-made Pegasus spyware, French President Emmanuel Macron called an urgent national security meeting today. A government spokesman said that the president wants to discuss the spyware after the reports about its use in France emerged this week.
The global media consortium reported on Tuesday that one of Macron’s phone numbers and some of his cabinet ministers’ phone numbers were on the leaked list of potential targets.
“The president is following this subject closely and takes it very seriously,” Gabriel Attal said. He further added that this unscheduled national security meeting would be “dedicated to the Pegasus issue and the question of cybersecurity”.
However, sources reveal that it has not been confirmed yet if the hacking of the President’s phone is a successful attempt or not. The forensic analysis report of the phone has not been released yet.
The Niv Shalev and Omri (NSO) Group Technologies has denied that Macron was among the target clients. “We can specifically come out and say for sure that the President of France, Macron, was not a target”, said Chaim Gelfand, Chief Compliance Officer at NSO Group.
Pegasus spyware can hack into mobile phones without the knowledge of the user. This enables its clients to read every message, track the user’s location, and tap into the phone’s camera and the microphone. Following the complaints from Mediapart, an investigative website, and Le Canard Enchaine Newspaper, prosecutors in Paris have opened a probe.