PEGASUS SPYWARE IS A SURVEILLANCE SOFTWARE
Pegasus spyware is a surveillance software created by the Israeli cyber intelligence firm NSO Group. The firm has been used solely for the sole purpose of saving lives through preventing crime and terrorist acts as claimed by the company and investigated by law enforcement and governments. Known for creating sophisticated software and technology to sell to intelligence agencies. Pegasus is software designed to gain access to your phone without consent and collect personal and sensitive information and pass it on to the user who is spying on you.
According to Kaspersky, Pegasus spyware is able to read the victim's SMS messages, listen to calls, take screenshots, record keystrokes, and access contacts and the browser.
Pegasus spyware is a surveillance software created by the Israeli cyber intelligence firm NSO Group. The firm has been used solely for the sole purpose of saving lives through preventing crime and terrorist acts as claimed by the company and investigated by law enforcement and governments. Known for creating sophisticated software and technology to sell to intelligence agencies. Pegasus is software designed to gain access to your phone without consent and collect personal and sensitive information and pass it on to the user who is spying on you.
According to Kaspersky, Pegasus spyware is able to read the victim's SMS messages, listen to calls, take screenshots, record keystrokes, and access contacts and the browser.
Pegasus spyware: how does it infect the phone?
The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) reports that eventually, as the public became more aware of these tactics and better able to identify malicious spam, a zero-click exploit solution was discovered. . This method doesn't rely on the target doing anything for Pegasus to compromise your device. Zero-click Messages rely on bugs in popular apps like WhatsApp and FaceTime, which all receive data and sometimes sort it from unknown sources. Once the vulnerability is found, Pegasus can infiltrate a device using the app's protocol. The user doesn't need to click a link, read a message, or answer a call - they can't even see a missed call or message.
"It connects to most messaging systems, including Gmail, Facebook, WhatsApp, FaceTime, Viber, WeChat, Telegram, Apple's inbuilt messaging and email apps, and more. With such a line-up, one can access almost the entire world's population." can spy. It is clear that NSO is offering an intelligence-agency-as-a-service," said Timothy Summers, a former cyber engineer with a US intelligence agency.
Amnesty International recently reported that spyware from NSO Group has infected new iPhone models, specifically the iPhone 11 and iPhone 12, through an iMessage zero-click attack. Spyware can impersonate an application downloaded to an iPhone and broadcast itself as Push
Kaspersky says Pegasus for Android doesn't rely on zero-day vulnerabilities. Instead, it uses A well known rooting method called Framaroot. Another difference: If the iOS version fails to jailbreak device, the whole attack fails, but with the Android version, even if the malware fails to get Root access required to install monitoring software, it will still try to ask the user directly It needs permissions to at least take out some of the data.
Pegasus spyware: is there any way to find out if a phone has been tampered with? Researchers at Amnesty International have developed a tool to check whether your phone is targeted by spyware. The purpose of the Mobile Verification Toolkit (MVT) is to help identify whether Pegasus has infected your device. While it works on both Android and iOS devices, it requires Some command line knowledge top works right now. However, MVT can achieve a graphical User Interface (GUI) over time.
Pegasus Spyware In India
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 allegations 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.
Independent digital forensic analysis conducted on 10 Indian phones whose numbers were present in the data showed signs of either an attempted or successful Pegasus hack. The results of the forensic analysis threw up shows sequential correlations between the time and date a phone number is entered in the list and the beginning of surveillance. The gap usually ranges between a few minutes and a couple of hours.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 harrasment, are also allegedly found on a database indicating the possibility of their phones being snooped. Records also indicate that phone numbers of some of the key political players in Karnataka appear to have been selected around the time when an intense power struggle was taking place between the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Janata Dal (Secular)-Congress-led state government in 2019. It was reported that the Indian government used Pegasus to spy on Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan and diplomats from Iran, Afghanistan, China, Nepal and Saudi Arabia.
Hacking of phones using the Pegasus spyware constituted a criminal offence punishable under Sections 66 (computer related offences), 66B (punishment for dishonestly receiving stolen computer resource or communication device), 66E (punishment for violation of privacy) and 66F (punishment for cyber terrorism) of the IT Act, punishable with imprisonment and/or fine.
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