India Today... Pegasus spying: how Pegasus is installed on phone, what it does, and how to get rid of it...
- Pegasus can be installed on vulnerable phones through a web link or a missed call.
- The spyware can steal passwords, contacts, text messages, and photos.
- The only way to avoid Pegasus after it has infected a phone is by getting rid of the phone.
Pegasus, developed by Israeli cybersecurity firm NSO Group, is a highly sophisticated spyware that has been referred to as the "most sophisticated smartphone attack ever". It was first noticed in 2016 but created a lot of buzz in late 2019 when it was revealed that the spyware was used for snooping on journalists and human rights activists across the globe, including in India. more
Tech Xplore... Pegasus spyware: how does it work?More recent versions of Pegasus, developed by the Israeli firm the NSO Group, have exploited weak spots in software commonly installed on mobiles.
In 2019 the messaging service WhatsApp sued NSO, saying it used one of these so-called "zero-day vulnerabilities" in its operating system to install the spyware on some 1,400 phones.
By simply calling the target through WhatsApp, Pegasus could secretly download itself onto their phone—even if they never answered the call.
More recently, Pegasus is reported to have exploited weaknesses in Apple's iMessage software.
That would potentially give it access to the one billion Apple
iPhones currently in use—all without the owners needing to even click a
button. more
