Here’s how Pegasus, the spyware that infected 50,000 cellphones of journalists and activists around the world

The spy program Pegasus, linked to Israeli society ONS, infected 50,000 cellphones of journalists, activists and politicians around the world, a tool that allows officials not only to remotely access an infected computer but also control it and obtain personal information from its owner.

As revealed by the investigation by the media consortium Forbidden Stories and Amnesty International, with evidence obtained from a forensic analysis of the phones themselves, 50,000 phones worldwide could be the target of the software. spy Pegasus, from the Israeli company NSO.

Avast mobile threat analyst Jakub Vavra explains in a statement that Pegasus is a Remote Access Tool (RAT) with spyware capabilities, that is, a tool with which you can remotely monitor a person’s phone and access items such as the camera or microphone, or perform actions such as screenshots or heartbeat recording.

Spyware is installed when the user clicks on a link from their phone, although sometimes it can be installed without the link, Based on research. Thanks to it, managers can extract data from popular messaging apps like WhatsApp, Facebook and Viber, as well as messaging and browser services.

Facebook last year denounced NSO, a company it accuses of infecting a network of servers in the United States in 2019 to hack hundreds of smartphones and spy on some 14,000 targets through its WhatsApp messaging service.

Spyware

The analyst specifies that “it is used as a very selective tool”, because this software “is only used by a few individuals, apparently for surveillance purposes”. The usual thing for other spyware is to spread widely to collect masses of user data.

“The minimal spread of spyware does not make it any less dangerous, for every individual who is under surveillance, the extent of the damage to privacy is certainly very high,” says Vavra. A note which joins what expressed the boss of WhatsApp, Will Cathcart, who assures that the software is used to “engage horrific human rights violations around the world“.

The Washington Post and other media have not been able to find out what exactly was the purpose of the 50,000 names list. They also don’t know who created the list and how many phones were targeted.

For now, they have been able to confirm that 37 were infiltrated, if only for a few seconds.

Speaking to the Washington Post, NSO Group declined to identify the governments to which it sold the spyware.

Pegasus first made headlines in 2016, when the prestigious Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto discovered vulnerabilities in iOS, Apple’s mobile operating system.

Later, in 2019, 1,400 people, including several Catalan politicians, were spied on by Pegasus, who took advantage of a vulnerability in WhatsApp to infiltrate phones.

With information from agencies.

SL