‘There was no hacking or tracking…’ Raghav Chadha was targeting the central government on spyware attacks, the Union Minister silenced him/her

New Delhi: The issue of spyware attacks came up during the discussion in the budget session in Rajya Sabha today. During the Question Hour, Aam Aadmi Party MP Raghav Chadha asked Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Jitin Prasada that in October 2023, I and other opposition leaders and journalists received information from Apple about possible state-sponsored spyware attacks on their phones. Has the government taken any cognizance of this?

There was no hacking or tracking

However, Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Jitin Prasada flatly denied Raghav Chadha’s statement in the Rajya Sabha. he/she said that there has been no state-sponsored (referring to the Government of India) hacking or tracking. he/she said that CERT-In or Indian Computer Emergency Response Team, under the Ministry of Information Technology, is in touch with Apple. The government has sought information from Apple about the alleged state-sponsored cyber attacks on Indians last year and will take action on the same.

Last year, many people received the message

Let us tell you that in the year 2023, many leaders and journalists of opposition parties of India received a message from Apple in which it was said that Apple believes that you are being targeted by state-sponsored attackers who are trying to remotely compromise the iPhone linked to your Apple ID.

They had received messages of hacking

1. Mahua Moitra
2. Priyanka Chaturvedi
3. Raghav Chaddha
4. Shashi Tharoor
5. Asaduddin Owaisi
6.Sitaram Yechury
7. Pawan Khera
8. Akhilesh Yadav
9. Siddharth Varadarajan
10. Shriram Karri
11. Samir Saran
12. Revati
13. KC Venugopal
14. Supriya Shrinet
15 Ravi Nair
16. KT Rama Rao
17. Seek happiness

this was the message

Let us tell you that in the year 2021, ‘Washington Post’ claimed in the news that the phones of many journalists and social workers around the world were hacked through Pegasus. According to ‘The Wire’, a database of 50,000 numbers was leaked and more than 300 numbers in it belonged to Indian people. Which included politicians, journalists and social workers. However, it was not clear whether these people were spied upon or not. Pegasus is a program that if installed in a smartphone, the person in front can get information about the microphone, camera, audio and text messages, email and even location of that smartphone.