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HIDE AND SEEK
Tracking NSO Group’s Pegasus Spyware to Operations in 45 Countries
By Bill Marczak, John Scott-Railton, Sarah McKune, Bahr Abdul Razzak, and Ron Deibert September 18, 2018
Israel-based “Cyber Warfare” vendor NSO Group produces and sells a mobile phone spyware suite called Pegasus. To monitor a target, a government operator of Pegasus must convince the target to click on a specially crafted exploit link, which, when clicked, delivers a chain of zero-day exploits to penetrate security features on the phone and installs Pegasus without the user’s knowledge or permission. Once the phone is exploited and Pegasus is installed, it begins contacting the operator’s command and control (C&C) servers to receive and execute operators’ commands, and send back the target’s private data, including passwords, contact lists, calendar events, text messages, and live voice calls from popular mobile messaging apps. The operator can even turn on the phone’s camera and microphone to capture activity in the phone’s vicinity.
There have been enough cloud-based hacks and backdoor data collection bots to think that it is only a matter of time before those of us whose personal lives have been completely upended by government spying will see that data being used by state-sponsored media, hackers and foreign governments for nefarious purposes.
An early case study of this happening was what happened to Jeff Bezos. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) placed Pegasus on Bezos’ phone during a WhatsApp conversation. MBS probably wanted to spy on what Jamal Khashoggi, who was a reporter for The Washington Post was going to publish next about the kingdom. Of course, Pegasus was also placed on the phone of Jamal Khashoggi’s wife by United Arab Emeritis (MSB) and most likely helped in his assassination.
Eventually, The Enquirer used the Pegasus data of Bezo’s affair to try to blackmail Bezos to stop the investigation into the origins of Pegasus on his phone. With that, Bezos announced his affair to the world, rather than be blackmailed. Which of course, led to his divorce. This is one small case study - of how two phones infected with spyware, ultimately led to the death of a reporter and in the case of Bezos, completely upended his life.
Pegasus has been sold to governments, including our own.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
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