Americans used Israeli-founded NSO’s controversial spyware to send fake messages to Tehran officials, IRGC operatives, saying downed officer had already been found, UK’s Times reports
The CIA used Israeli-made Pegasus software to carry out a deception campaign in Iran amid the effort to retrieve the second of two downed US airmen last weekend, the Times of London reported.
The spyware, widely used by the CIA, is mostly known as a means of hacking into devices in order to eavesdrop on communications and discreetly harvest data.
But it also allows operators to send fake WhatsApp or Signal messages that appear to come from the user of the phone that was hacked.
According to the Times report on Friday, the American spy agency used Pegasus to send messages to the Iranian leadership and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps operatives saying that the downed US airman had already been found.
US officials have publicly spoken about the subterfuge efforts, but none has made explicit reference to the Pegasus software thus far.
Pegasus, made by the Israeli-founded NSO company, has come under controversy for reported use by Saudi Arabia, India, and Poland’s previous, right-wing government, among others, to clamp down on dissent.
The Times also followed up on reports that the US possesses a unique technology that can detect an individual’s heartbeat from dozens of miles away, and that it was through this so-called Ghost Murmur system that forces first identified the airman, who was hiding in a crevice 7,000 feet up a mountain in the desert.
The technology — which would appear to surpass anything publicly known, given that a heartbeat is too faint for known technology to detect from even mere dozens of yards away — was first reported on by The New York Post.
When the American tabloid asked US President Donald Trump about the reported technology, he reportedly said: “It was very important,” and “Nobody even knows what it is. Nobody ever heard of it before,” adding: “We have many other things that nobody has ever heard about.”
Source: Times of Israel
