New Delhi: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, election strategist Prashant Kishor and Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw are among the top targets of Israeli spyware 'Pegasus', The Wire, in its second set of explosive revelations said.

The latest reveal includes two current Union Ministers, Prahlad Patel and Ashwini Vaishnav. Prashant Kishor has played a big role in the BJP's 2014 campaign that saw Prime Minister Narendra Modi come to power for the first time with a spectacular mandate and has since had a galaxy of political clients mostly opposed to the BJP. Recently, he was credited with a role in the victories of Mamata Banerjee in Bengal and MK Stalin in Tamil Nadu.

On Sunday, The Wire as part of an investigation has revealed that at least 40 Indian journalists from across media houses were on a list of potential targets for surveillance, carried out through a systematic hacking of their devices using the controversial Israeli spyware Pegasus. In a detailed report, it also added that forensic tests confirmed that a number of the potential victims had indeed been spied upon by unidentified sources via the Pegasus app.

Pegasus is spyware that was developed by an Israeli "cyber weapons" company named NSO Group. The first time it hit the news was in 2016 when several iPhone users were believed to be targeted by the software to hack them. While iPhone claimed to fix the vulnerabilities that allowed Pegasus to infiltrate its users' devices, the spyware was later reported to also hack Android devices.

The report also added that along with the 40 journalists, "three major opposition figures, one constitutional authority, two serving ministers in the Narendra Modi government, current and former heads and officials of security organizations and scores of businesspersons" were part of the list of potential or past victims.