Israeli media reported that French President Emmanuel Macron had asked Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Naftali for clarifications regarding the Israeli spying program Pegasus.
She added that Macron expressed his dissatisfaction with the matter and asked to make sure that Israel takes the Pegasus issue seriously.
According to the same sources, Macron promised to investigate the matter and draw the required results soon, stressing that the espionage took place before he took office.
It is reported that countries used the Pegasus program to spy on Macron and other French figures.
For its part, the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth said that France wants to know whether Tel Aviv has already opened an investigation against the "NSO" company that developed the Pegasus program.
Macron, who was on the list of supposed targets, was forced to change his number and the telephone device he was using.
On Thursday, the French president called for an extraordinary meeting of the Defense Council, after publishing reports that he had been targeted by the spyware.
penetration methods
And questions are raised about the nature of the methods used by the Pegasus system to hack phones, including the phones of politicians, journalists and human rights activists.
It is estimated that thousands of phones have been hacked on both iOS and Android operating systems.
Experts say that the beginning is done by sending a link, whether through text messages, communication networks, e-mail or other means, but the method developed after that, through what is known as the zero-click strategy, so that the hacker no longer needs to click on a link, so the user can Hacking your phone by receiving a call via WhatsApp without even answering it.
The hacker exploits a loophole in the phone that the manufacturer did not know about at the time, which is what actually happened with WhatsApp.
As for the apps, the hacks were not limited to WhatsApp, but extended to Apple Photos by sending zero-click links to iMessage and the Apple Music app.
Even when operating systems can add updates to close the vulnerabilities, Pegasus can be implanted on transceivers near the target, such as a Wi-Fi transmitter, or even manually implanted malware in the phone after the phone is stolen from the user.
The Amnesty International report indicates that the Pegasus system has penetrated thousands of phones of modern types.
Calls to stop spying
The organization called for a temporary moratorium on the sale and use of spying technologies, saying that allegations that governments used software supplied by an Israeli company to spy on journalists, activists and heads of state "exposed a global human rights crisis".
The NGO warned of the "devastating impact of the unregulated spyware industry on human rights in the world".
NSO Group's Pegasus program, which is able to operate a phone's camera or microphone and collect their data, has become the center of a major scandal after a list of about 50,000 potential surveillance targets was leaked to human rights organizations.
"Amnesty International" and "Forbidden Stories" of France cooperated with a group of media organizations, including the "Washington Post", "The Guardian" and "Le Monde" to analyze and publish the list.
The list of presumed targets includes at least 180 journalists, 600 politicians, 85 human rights activists and 65 businessmen.
NSO stresses that its spyware is intended for use only in the field of counter-terrorism and other crimes, and that it exports its technology to 45 countries with the approval of the Israeli government.