The military-grade spy software Pegasus, developed by the Israeli company NSO to track terrorists and criminals, has been used in at least 50 countries to spy on cell phones belonging to journalists, human rights activists, business executives and even Presidents.
Index
1. The Pegasus Scandal.
2. How does the Pegasus virus work?
3. Protect yourself from Pegasus with Encriptados.
The Pegasus Scandal
The scandal, without a doubt, has raised alarms about massive virtual espionage and has put the company that developed the virus and Israel, native country of the company, in the center of the storm.
The investigation published by some media is based on the leak of a list of up to 50,000 phone numbers believed to have been identified as belonging to persons of interest by NSO clients since 2016. According to the researchers, 180 journalists, 600 politicians, 85 human rights activists and 65 businessmen have been affected so far.
This particular software is very intrusive: it can hack cellphones without the user even knowing, allowing spies to read all messages, track a user’s location, and access the cell phone’s camera and microphone. They can see the screen and operate the microphones and cameras. Pretty dangerous right?
Some of the people affected were the president of France Emmanuel Macron, the president of Mexico Andrés Manuel López, the king of Morocco and many journalists from portals such as the New York Times, CNN, Bloomberg, The Guardian and many others.
Additionally, the phone list includes that of Cecilio Pineda, a Mexican reporter murdered in March 2017. Relatives of 43 students who disappeared in 2014 in Ayotzinapa and human rights defenders were also targeted.
How does the Pegasus virus work?
Cybercriminals identify a vulnerability in an application that is typically used to call, email, or send messages, then use social engineering to trick you, whether with a call, email, message, or any other technique. Once entered into the mobile phone, Pegasus exports the user’s data (emails, messaging, photographs, etc.) to internet pages created by NSO, which are constantly renewed to avoid detection. This transmission of information goes completely unnoticed by the user and it is very difficult to find any evidence of this espionage.
To hack the phone, the victim had to enter some links sent by WhatsApp, Apple Music, Text Messages and others, but current revelations say that they no longer even need this to infect a phone.
Protect yourself from Pegasus with Encriptados
At Encriptados we have the best digital security and secure communications tools to protect yourself against Pegasus and any other software that tries to access your information. Find the best encrypted apps and the best military-grade encrypted cell phones that will keep all your equipment safe so that not even Pegasus can access it.
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