Israeli spyware found on phones of Macron’s advisor and five French ministers

Paris (QNN)- The mobile phones of at least five French ministers and a diplomatic advisor to the French President Emmanuel Macron were targeted by the Israeli-made Pegasus spyware, AFP cited a source on Friday, confirming a report by the Mediapart investigative website.

The allegation comes two months after the Pegasus Project revealed that the phone numbers of top French officials, including French President Emmanuel Macron and most of his 20-strong cabinet, appeared in a leaked database at the heart of the investigative project.

There is no firm evidence that the phones of the five cabinet members were successfully hacked, but the Mediapart allegations indicate that the devices were targeted with the powerful spyware known as Pegasus, which is made by the Israeli NSO Group.

The five French 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 said.

Pegasus can switch on a phone’s camera or microphone and harvest its data, and was at the centre of a storm in July after a list of about 50,000 potential surveillance targets worldwide was leaked to the media.

NSO has claimed that its spyware is meant to be used to investigate serious crime and spy on terrorists. It has claimed that it has no connection to the leaked database that was investigated by the Pegasus Project and that the tens of thousands of numbers contained in the list are not the targets of NSO’s government clients. It has also staunchly denied that Macron was ever targeted by Pegasus spyware.

Pegasus has been described as being “incompatible with human rights”. It was also involved in targeting a long list of human rights activists and journalists, including Jamal Khashoggi, who was slaughtered in the embassy of his country in Istanbul.