EXPLAINED: All That You Should Know About Pegasus Spyware

From the iPhone to Android devices and with a click to no clicks at all, the spyware Pegasus is reported to have figured out how to infiltrate any phone anywhere, and anyhow. According to The Washington Post, which was part of the 17-member group of news organisations that worked on the ‘Pegasus Project’, which was coordinated by Paris-based nonprofit Forbidden Stories and also included human rights group Amnesty International, Pegasus is the flagship spyware of the Israel-based NSO Group, which describes itself as “the world leader in precision cyber intelligence solutions for the sole use of vetted-and-approved, state-administered intelligence and law enforcement agencies”. The Guardian, another publication that was part of the Pegasus Project, says that “more recently NSO has begun exploiting vulnerabilities in Apple’s iMessage software, giving it backdoor access to hundreds of millions of iPhones”. The Guardian also adds that apart from spear-phishing and zero-day attacks, Pegasus “can also be installed over a wireless transceiver located near a target”. The Pegasus spyware can read the WhatsApp message because it can access the tech on the target’s device that unscrambles the encryption and makes it readable for the target.