Heads of 12 countries, including French President Macron, are suspected of spying

(PTI) Boston, Ta. 21

Amnesty International suspects that current or former heads of state, including French President Emmanuel Macron, have been spied on by clients of Israel's NSO group, spy spy Pegasus. Amnesty International Secretary-General Agnes Colmard said the extraordinary revelation of Pegasus espionage had shaken leaders around the world. The list of 20,000 phone numbers leaked by Amnesty International also includes heads of state from several countries.

The Washington Post reports that the phone numbers of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and Iraq's Salih, Morocco's King Mohammed II and the three current prime ministers, Pakistan's Imran Khan, Egypt's Mustafa Medbauli and Morocco's Al Othmani are also on the list. The Post said the heads of any countries had not sent the phones for forensic testing to investigate whether their smartphones had been spied on by NSO's military-grade Pegasus spyware. Investigations have revealed that the phones were tapped or attempted to be tapped.

The list of phone numbers leaked by Amnesty was given to 12 other members of the Washington Post and the Global Media Consortium. According to the French daily Le Monde, 15 members of the French government may have been spying with Macron in 2016. The Paris Prosecutor's Office said it was investigating the spying scandal after the first report was released by the Global Media Consortium on Sunday. Forensic analysis released by Amnesty also allegedly targeted Amazon Web Services, hosting NSO Infrastructure. Amazon said it had closed the NSO's account after reports of spying activity were confirmed.

Digital Ocean is also a hosting company for NSO servers, according to Amnesty. In this regard, Digital Os has remained silent on these reports. However, the company said, none of the infrastructure featured in Amnesty is on the digital ocean. In 2012, the consortium published reports of spying on the NSO group's spyware Pegasus. According to a report, the family members and friends of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was killed at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2012, were also tapped. The urgent need to control global sales of professional hacking tools has been emphasized since the Pegasus espionage scandal was uncovered.

The consortium members said they had identified the numbers of more than 1,000 people, including more than 200 politicians and government officials from 20 countries and 15 journalists. The NSO group, on the other hand, denied that its clients had targeted the French president for espionage. The NSO group has denied having any list of potential, past or present targets. The fact that the number is on the list does not mean that the device has been hacked or attempted to be hacked, the sources said.