Not surprised that my phone was targeted, says Congress leader Praveen Chakravarty

The AIPC chairman, whose phone was determined as a recent spyware target, says he was ‘exhausted’ from the snooping; points out that his phone had an infection determined in 2022 as well

All India Professionals Congress chairman Praveen Chakravarty. | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

All India Professionals’ Congress chairman Praveen Chakravarty said that he was “not surprised” with the revelations by Amnesty International and the Washington Post on Thursday that his mobile phone had been targeted by a spyware that could allow attackers to siphon data out of his phone and monitor his microphone and camera.

Siddharth Varadarajan, editor of online news portal The Wire, had traces of a Pegasus exploit known as ‘Blastpass’ detected on his mobile phone after tech major Apple sent him and dozens of Opposition leaders and independent journalists a security alert in October.

It is not clear if Mr. Chakravarty’s phone was targeted specifically by Pegasus, which is developed by the Israeli firm NSO Group and sold only to governments and national intelligence agencies. However, Mr. Chakravarty said that after the Apple alerts, he had his mobile phone forensically examined by New York-based cybersecurity firm iVerify, which shared its findings with the U.S. newspaper.

“There were no crash logs in September and October on WhatsApp and Signal, which is highly suspicious,” Mr. Chakravarty said, paraphrasing a report sent to him by iVerify. Crash reports are routine digital logs generated by apps, and their absence in these two months indicated, among other data examined by the firm, that there had been an intrusion and a subsequent cover-up.

‘Device compromised’

“It is evident that an attempt was made to compromise this device, and in this case it appears the attempt was successful before October, and additional attempts were made in November and December,” iVerify said in its report to Mr. Chakravarty, excerpts of which he shared with The Hindu. Crash logs that are present in Mr. Chakravarty’s online backups are missing from the device, which iVerify said was “highly suspicious”. After his phone was updated last month, the crash logs were being generated as usual.

Mr. Chakravarty also obtained a similar appraisal from Citizen Lab, the Canadian cybersecurity laboratory that has uncovered Pegasus infections before. He said his phone was examined and found to have the virus in the beginning of 2022. While he can’t say with certainty if the indications of spyware running on his phone this year was that of Pegasus, he pointed out that there was a range of “industrial” spyware that are available to governments willing to pay the steep prices to procure them.

‘Just exhausted’

“Am I shocked or surprised? To be honest, no. I’m just exhausted,” Mr. Chakravarty said in a telephone interview from Nagpur. “Can’t we just lead our lives normally?” The cybersecurity firm advised him to turn on ‘Lockdown Mode’ in iPhone, a feature specifically launched by Apple for individuals vulnerable to cybersecurity attacks. The firm also said it would be ideal for him to get a new handset and phone number, and to reboot his phone every day.

The Union government has not categorically denied it uses Pegasus. Trade data shows that the Intelligence Bureau (IB) obtained hardware from Pegasus maker NSO Group in 2017. The government also did not cooperate with a Supreme Court-ordered investigation into Pegasus use, and the investigation committee’s report has not been released in the public domain.