The Federal Ministry of Information Technology and Communication has issued a confidential letter to concerned authorities and advised them not to use WhatsApp for official correspondence.
According to reports, hostile Israeli intelligence has installed a stealth spyware ‘Pegasus’ to monitor users sensitive data, activities, and movements. The spyware was recently deployed in 1,400 senior government and military official’s phones in 20 countries, including Pakistan.
The ministry said that in order to minimise the possibility of any infection by Pegasus malware, government officials holding sensitive portfolios and dealing with national security matters should not share any classified information on WhatsApp or any similar application.
Furthermore, Pakistani users could be in a more precarious situation as the Indian government is also reportedly using the spyware to monitor the Pakistani user’s cellphone data.
Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi has also alleged Prime Minister Modi’s government of collaborating with Israeli spy agencies to spy into the phones of journalists, lawyers, activists and politicians in India.
The spyware (Pegasus) has sent waves of concerns in every corner of the world because it has infected millions of smartphones. WhatsApp has officially acknowledged the cyber-attack and filed a lawsuit against the maker of the software. WhatsApp/Facebook has also sued the Israeli company in the US court of San Francisco for violating the US, California state laws as well as the WhatsApp terms of services.
Considering the Ministry doesn’t have any solution in place to curb cyber-attacks of this level, they have advised government officials to discard all mobile phones purchased before May 10 this year.
