Paris: Mobile from at least five French ministers and diplomatic advisors for President Emmanuel Macron was infected by spyware Pegasus Israel, said the source on Friday, confirming the report by the Mediapart investigation site.
French security services detected Makware when checking the phone, with intrusion which was believed to have occurred in 2019 and 2020, according to a report from Mediapart on Friday.
Pegasus, made by the Israeli NSO Group company, can divert the camera or mic and harvest the data, and is in the center of the storm in July after a list of around 50,000 potential supervisory targets throughout the world leaked to the media.
The media consortium behind leaked was reported at that time one of the Macron telephone numbers and those of the many French ministers were in a potential target list.
The French authority declined to comment on Friday.
Five ministers targeted are Minister of Education Jean-Michel Banquer, Minister of Territorial Cohesion Jacqueline Gourault, Minister of Agriculture Julien Denormandie, Minister of Housing Emmanuelle Wargon and the Foreign Region of Mederien Lecornu, said Mediapart.
Two sources of France confirmed the truth of the report, while asking not to be identified.
“My cellphone was being examined by the National IT system security agency, but I haven’t heard anything about the probe so I can’t comment at this stage,” Wargon told L’on Friday.
One of the killers said, “The Minister does not have access to any country’s secrets, so we cannot really see the spying point on him”.
In July, Le Monde reported that the evidence of hacking efforts was found on the phone’s former Minister of Environment and closing Ally Macron Francois de Rugy, with the effort allegedly from Morocco.