India has asked Facebook-owned WhatsApp to explain the nature of a privacy breach on its messaging platform that has affected some users in the country, Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said on Thursday.
A WhatsApp spokesman was quoted by the Indian Express newspaper on Thursday as saying that Indian journalists and human rights activists were targets of surveillance by an Israeli spyware. The company said it was “not an insignificant number” of people, but did not share specifics.
WhatsApp’s comments came after the messaging platform sued Israeli surveillance firm NSO Group on Tuesday, accusing it of helping government spies break into the phones of roughly 1,400 users across four continents including diplomats, political dissidents, journalists and government officials. NSO denied the allegations.
“We have asked WhatsApp to explain the kind of breach and what it is doing to safeguard the privacy of millions of Indian citizens,” Prasad said in a tweet.
WhatsApp said it had no comment on Prasad’s tweet, but referred to a previous WhatsApp statement that the company believes people have the fundamental right to privacy and no one else should have access to their private conversations.
Sidhant Sibal, a New Delhi-based journalist, told Reuters the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab – which investigates digital espionage among other research projects – called him about a month ago, informing him that his WhatsApp account was one of several under surveillance.
Earlier this week, he received a text message from WhatsApp, saying the company cared about “your privacy and security”.
“In May we stopped an attack where an advanced cyber actor exploited our video calling to install malware on user devices,” the company said, explaining why it was writing to Sibal and other affected users like him.
“There’s a possibility this phone number was impacted, and we want to make sure you know how to keep your mobile phone secure.”
Citizen Lab in a post on its website dated Oct. 29, said it was helping WhatsApp investigate the incident and would continue to contact affected individuals to help protect their security.
India is WhatsApp’s biggest market with 400 million users. Last year the Indian government began pushing the Cupertino, California-based company to trace the origin of some messages, saying the platform was being used to spread misinformation.
WhatsApp has always maintained it will not take such steps, which would require it to weaken encryption and other privacy protections.
Globally, the platform is used by some 1.5 billion people monthly and has often touted a high level of security, including end-to-end encrypted messages that cannot be deciphered by WhatsApp or other third parties.
In its lawsuit filed in a federal court in San Francisco, WhatsApp accused NSO of facilitating government hacking sprees in 20 countries, calling it “an unmistakable pattern of abuse.”
