Fri. Jul 30, 2021 | By Stephen Shankland – cnet |
It’s a doozy of a digital spying technology case. Security researchers have found evidence of attempted or successful installations of Pegasus, software made by an Israel-based cybersecurity company, on 37 phones of activists, journalists and businesspeople. The activists and others appear to have been targets of secret surveillance by software that’s intended to pursue criminals and terrorists.
It’s been a politically explosive issue that has put Israel under pressure, not just by activists, but also by governments worried about misuse of the software from NSO Group. France and the United States have raised concerns, and NSO has suspended some countries’ Pegasus privileges, NPR reported Thursday.
The phones were on an activist organization’s list of more than 50,000 phone numbers for politicians, judges, lawyers, teachers and others. Also on that list are 10 prime ministers, three presidents and a king, according to an international investigation released in mid-July by The Washington Post and other media outlets, although there’s no proof that being on the list means an attack was attempted or successful.
Pegasus is the latest example of how vulnerable we all are to digital prying. Our most personal information — photos, text messages and emails — is stored on our phones. Spyware can reveal directly what’s going on in our lives, bypassing the encryption that protects data sent over the internet.
The 50,000 phone numbers are connected to phones around the world, though NSO disputes the link between the list and actual phones targeted by Pegasus. The devices of dozens of people close to Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador were on the list, as were those belonging to reporters at CNN, the Associated Press, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. But phones from several on the list, including Claude Mangin, the French wife of a political activist jailed in Morocco, were infected or attacked.
Here’s what you need to know about Pegasus…
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