What is Pegasus Spyware?
Pegasus is a spyware developed by the Israeli cyber arms firm NSO Group that can be covertly installed on mobile phones running most versions of iOS and Android.
NSO Group was previously owned by American private equity firm Francisco partners, but it was bought back by its founders in 2019. The company states that it provides authorized government with technology that helps them combat terror and crime.
Zero click installation that requires no action by the target is not only ability that makes pegasus the super spyware it is. What also makes it unique is the capability of "active collection", which gives attackers the power to "control the information" they want to collect from the targeted device.
The spyware can steal private data from a phone, sending a target's messages, passwords, contacts, photos, location and more to whoever initiated the surveillance. It can reportedly even turn on the phone's cameras or microphones to create covert recordings.
The transmitted data is encrypted with symmetric encryption AES 128-bit. Even encrypting, extra care is taken to ensure that pegasus uses minimal data, battery, and memory to make sure that the target does not get suspicious.
Data transmission stops automatically when the battery level is low, or when the target is roaming. when transmission is not possible, pegasus stores the collected data in a hidden and encrypted buffer. under rare ciscumstances when no transmission is possible through safe channes, and attacker can collect urgetnt data through text messages.
Pegasus comes complete with an efficient self-destruct mechanism. Any risk of exposure automatically activates the self-destruct mechanism, which also comes into effect if pegasus does not communicate with its server from an infected device for 60 days or a customized period of time.
The company does not allow infected phones to travel to the united states. The moment a victim enters the US, pegasus in her device goes into self-destruct mode.
Pegasus discovered in august 2016 after a failed installation attempt on the iphone of an arab human rights activist Ahmed mansoor led to an investigation revealing details about the spyware, its abilities and the sedcurity vulnerabilities it exploited. News of the spyware caused significant media coverage. It was called the "most sophisitcated" smartphone attack ever.
On August 23, 2020, according to intelligence obtained by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, NSO Group sold Pegasus spyware software for hundreds of millions of US dollars to the United Arab Emirates and the other Gulf States, for surveillance of anti-regime activists, journalists, and political leaders from rival nations, with encouragement and mediation by the Israeli government.
Later, in December 2020, the Al Jazeera investigative show The Tip of the Iceberg, Spy partners, exclusively covered Pegasus and its penetration into the phones of media professionals and activists; and its use by Israel to eavesdrop on both opponents and allies.
In July 2021, widespread media coverage part of the Project Pegasus revelations along with an in-depth analysis by human rights group Amnesty International uncovered that Pegasus was still being widely used against high-profile targets. It showed that Pegasus was able to infect all modern iOS versions up to the latest release, iOS 14.6, through a zero-click iMessage exploit.
In late 2019, Facebook initiated a suit against NSO, claiming that Pegasus had been used to intercept the WhatsApp communications of a number of activists, journalists, and bureaucrats in India, leading to accusations that the Indian government was involved.
Phone numbers of Indian ministers, opposition leaders, ex-election commissioners and journalists were allegedly found on a database of NSO hacking targets by Project Pegasus in 2021. 11 phone numbers associated with a female employee of the Supreme Court of India and her immediate family, who accused the former Chief Justice of India, Ranjan Gogoi, of sexual harassment, are also allegedly found on a databaseindicating possibility of their phones being snooped.
It was reported that the Indian government used Pegasus to spyon Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan and diplomats from Iran, Afghanistan, China, Nepal and Saudi Arabia.
Pegasus has been used to target and intimidate Mexican journalistsby drug cartels and cartel-entwined government actors. Pegasus software, whose sales are licensed by the government of Israel to foreign governments, helped Saudi Arabia spy on Jamal Kashoggi,who was later killed in Turkey.Pegasus was also used to spy on Jeff Bezos after Mohammed bin Salman, the crown-prince of Saudi Arabia, exchanged messages with him that exploited then-unknown vulnerabilities in WhatsApp.
A leak of a list of over 50,000 phone numbers believed to have been identified as those of people of interest by clients of NSO since 2016 became available to Paris-based media nonprofit organization Forbidden Stories and Amnesty International.
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