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.”

Last week, CIA Director John Ratcliffe said the US “deployed both human assets and exquisite technologies that no other intelligence service in the world possesses to a daunting challenge, comparable to hunting for a single grain of sand in the middle of a desert.”

The New York Times reported last week that Israel had worked with the US to gather intelligence to determine if the airman was alone, and had carried out strikes along with the US to provide cover to the American commandos during the rescue operation.

The rescue last weekend was the first time the US had lost aircraft in Iranian territory during the war, which began on February 28 with a wave of US and Israeli airstrikes that killed, among others, supreme leader Ali Khamenei.

A two-week ceasefire agreement was reached between the US and Iran last week, which Israel has said it will adhere to. But US-Iran talks in Pakistan on Saturday, at which Israel was not represented, failed to resolve the conflict.

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