PTI leader Fawad Chaudhry, while raising questions over the cyber security situation in the country, said that PM House’s data has been put on sale on the dark web. Fawad claimed that 100 hours-long conversations of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif have been put up for sale on the dark web for $3.5 million. Taking to his Twitter handle, the PTI leader said, “It is a major failure of our intelligence agencies, especially the Intelligence Bureau (IB).” “Besides political matters, important discussion on security and foreign affairs are in their hands,” he added. Expressing shock over purported leaked audio clips of government officials, Fawad said, “Even the office of the prime minister of the nuclear-armed country is not safe.”
Commenting on one of the leaked audio clips featuring a conversation between the premier and a government official, Fawad said the conversation showed that decisions were being made in London. “[In the audio clip] Maryam Nawaz is demanding Shahbaz Sharif to clear the way for her son-in-law’s machinery import from India,” he remarked.
Separately in a tweet, Fawad criticised the country’s security agencies, saying: “They would have cared about this sensitive matter if they had got time from political matters.”
Another PTI leader Mirza Shahzad Akbar said the audio leak scandal was not a hacking but definitely an inside job, aimed at influencing the government’s decision-making ahead of the crucial appointment.
“First it’s not a hack into the system [and] hacker [and] dark web seems cover story, our systems are based on analogue and not digital, in fact, that’s one way of Pak cyber security,” he said while sharing his sources-based information on the matter.
Akbar, who served as PM’s aide on accountability during last PTI’s tenure, added that timing of the leak was important “as it’s just before crucial appointment, target seems clearly to influence the decision, which way though only time will tell!”
Raising questions over the security of the PM Office, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Finance Minister Taimur Khan Jhagra said: “8GB of hacked leaks from PMO. Regardless of who is speaking, this Orwellian culture of recordings is disgusting.” The minister asked, “Who is accountable for the security of this data?”
