A few days ago, it became known that the malicious utility called Pegasus, created by the Israeli company NSO Group for enforcement agencies and intelligence services, is widely wont to spy on residents of various countries secretly.
According to information security specialists, a minimum of 50 thousand devices is infected around the world. This number doesn’t seem remarkably high, but Pegasus Spyware is extremely dangerous – it allows you to require full control of the smartphone, secretly read correspondence, wiretap phone conversations, view photos and videos
Popular antiviruses cannot detect Pegasus Spyware since this malware exploits zero-day vulnerabilities that are unknown to the developers of operating systems and antivirus applications.
The human rights organization Amnesty International has developed a utility that permits you to spot this malware. it’s called MVT (Mobile Verification Toolkit), and its ASCII text file is out there on GitHub.
The MVT utility is compatible with Android and iOS, but there are not any ready-made solutions for the fast installation of the appliance. they have to be compiled for a selected device, which may be done only on a computer with Linux or macOS.
The utility saves a backup copy of the info from the smartphone on the pc, scans all data and checks if the device is infected with the Pegasus spyware, and informs the user if information from his device might be compromised and transferred to 3rd parties.
Information security experts believe that this spyware is employed for targeted surveillance. It infects not random devices but only smartphones belonging to specific people whose activities are of interest to those that control this software. Each Pegasus license costs many thousands of dollars, so surveillance is especially administered on those with valuable information (for example, politicians, business leaders or journalists of major publications).
Although the Pegasus case has become very fashionable within the news recently, many other spy apps still run silently and spy on their victims. Many programs operate during a grey area posing as parental control or other legitimate applications. take care , practice good digital hygiene, and stay safe.
