From the Middle East to China, Pegasus spyware revelations show the spread of hacking as a service
The line that separates cyber defence from cyber mercenaries is easily blurred, and China presents a challenge for regulating private espionage.
Tag Archive for: Pegasus
Israel Raids Pegasus Maker NSO Group’s Offices, Company Claims It Was Only A ‘Visit’
Israeli authorities have inspected the offices of Pegasus maker NSO group’s offices as part of its investigations into the reports of spyware abuses by the company in different countries including India.
The company has claimed in a statement that it was only a ‘visit’ rather than a ‘raid’.
The Guardian reported that officials from the Israeli Defence Ministry visited the company’s offices near Tel Aviv on Wednesday. The NSO said it had been informed in advance about the inspection. “The company is working in full transparency with the Israeli authorities,” it said.
At the same time Defence Minister Benny Gantz arrived in Paris for a pre-arranged visit, in which he discussed the Pegasus revelations with his French counterpart, Florence Parly. Gantz told French Defence Minister, Florence Parly, on Wednesday that Israel is investigating the matter “with the utmost seriousness”.
The Defence Ministry said in a tweet that the visit conducted by several state bodies was related to reports by a consortium of 17 media outlets that revealed Pegasus spyware sold by NSO targeted human rights activists, journalists and lawyers across the world.
In India, over 500 individuals and groups have written to Chief Justice of India (CJI) N V Ramana seeking immediate intervention of the Supreme Court in the alleged Pegasus snooping matter and declare a “moratorium on the export, sale, transfer and use of Pegasus” spyware in the country.
The letter urged the top court to direct the Centre and the Israeli firm NSO to provide a time-bound answers to the several questions regarding the state-sponsored cyber-warfare that has been waged against Indian citizens, given the revelations of the Pegasus Project, an international collaborative investigation being conducted by several international media and research organisations.
Accusing the BJP dispensation of being responsible for the logjam in Parliament, the Congress on Thursday said the government was “avoiding” discussion on the Pegasus snooping issue in both the Houses as it has “much to hide”.
It also accused the BJP MPs of “collectively insulting” Parliament by their behaviour in the meeting of the Standing…
How to Defend Yourself Against NSO Spyware Like Pegasus
An international group of journalists this month detailed extensive new evidence that spyware made by Israeli company NSO Group was used against activists, business executives, journalists, and lawyers around the world. Even Apple’s iPhone, frequently lauded for its tight security, was found to be “no match” for the surveillance software, leading Johns Hopkins cryptographer Matthew Green to fret that the NSO revelations had led some hacking experts to descend into a posture of “security nihilism.”
Security nihilism is the idea that digital attacks have grown so sophisticated that there’s nothing to be done to prevent them from happening or to blunt their impact. That sort of conclusion would be a mistake. For one thing, it plays into the hands of malicious hackers, who would love nothing more than for targets to stop trying to defend themselves. It’s also mistaken factually: You can defend yourself against NSO’s spyware — for example, by following operational security techniques like not clicking unknown links, practicing device compartmentalization (such as using separate devices for separate apps), and having a virtual private network, or VPN, on mobile devices. Such techniques are effective against any number of digital attacks and thus useful even if NSO Group turns out to be correct in its claim that the purported evidence against the company is not valid.
There may be no such thing as perfect security, as one classic adage in the field states, but that’s no excuse for passivity. Here, then, are practical steps you can take to reduce your “attack surface” and protect yourself against spyware like NSO’s.
Pegasus Offers “Unlimited Access to Target’s Mobile Devices”
The recent revelations concern a specific NSO spyware product known as Pegasus. They follow extensive prior studies of the company’s software from entities like the Citizen Lab, Amnesty International, Article 19, R3D, and SocialTIC. Here’s what we know about Pegasus specifically.
The software’s capabilities were outlined in what appears to be a promotional brochure from NSO Group dating to 2014 or earlier and made available when WikiLeaks published a trove of emails related to a…
WhatsApp CEO says Pegasus Project stories show need for greater smartphone security
NSO has also pointed out in court that at one point, Facebook, which owns WhatsApp, solicited NSO’s business. In 2017, Facebook executives reached out to NSO to ask for help in tracking the habits of iPhone users, including which apps they used and how much time they spent on them, according to records obtained by The Post. NSO says it denied the request because it only does business with governments.