The phones of 5 French ministers and a diplomatic advisor to French President Emmanuel Macron were targeted by the Israeli hacking program Pegasus, sources told AFP Friday.
The French news agency said that the French authorities did not want to make any comment on Friday.
The hack was detected by French security services during a phone inspection, and they believe the hack occurred between 2019 and 2020, according to a report issued on Friday by Mediapart.
The Pegasus software, developed by the Israeli company "NSO Group" (NSO), can operate the smartphone's camera and microphone and obtain its data.
In July, a list of up to 50,000 phone numbers believed to be from people NSO considered to be of interest was leaked since 2016.
The media, whose investigations revealed this information, including the "Washington Post", "The Guardian" and "Le Monde", had reported at the time that the leaked list included one of Macron's phone numbers and the numbers of several French ministers.
The ministers targeted are Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquet, Minister of Territorial Unity (under the Ministry of the Interior) Jacqueline Gouraud, Minister of Agriculture Julien Donnormandy, Minister of Housing Emmanuel Wargon and Minister of Expatriation Sebastien Lecornu, according to Mediapart.
Two French sources familiar with the investigation confirmed the validity of the information contained in the report, on condition of anonymity because they did not have permission to speak to the media.
On Friday, Wargon said in a statement to the "Lupinion" website, "My phone is among the phones that the National Agency for Information Technology Systems Security has checked, but I have not been informed of anything yet about the investigation so I cannot comment at this point."
"The minister is not authorized to see any of the state's secrets, so we see no point in spying on her," one of her assistants told AFP.
In July, Le Monde newspaper reported evidence of an attempt to hack the phone of former Environment Minister François Lerouge, who is close to Macron, originating from Morocco.
The newspaper accused the Moroccan intelligence of being behind the hacking of journalists' phones in France, which the Moroccan government denied and filed a judicial complaint for defamation.