SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY


World’s Most Powerful Cyberweapon


Israeli spyware turns your smartphone into an “intelligence gold mine.” :: BY SAM KATZ P P


egasus. remember that name because it certainly will remember you — if it infects your phone.


Pegasus is a highly advanced


software program able to penetrate even the most encrypted smartphones, and has reportedly been sold to governments and agencies around the world by Israel-based company NSO Group Technologies. It has allegedly been used by many


law enforcement and intelligence agencies to conduct counterterrorist


and counterintelligence surveillance. Pegasus exploits software


weaknesses in cellphones known as zero-day vulnerabilities, according to The Jerusalem Post. These vulnerabilities have been


given this name because they are loopholes in the operating systems of devices that have not yet been discovered (hence “zero-day”), and have not been closed off by the companies producing the equipment or operating systems like Android by Google. NSO has been in the news a lot of late, and for a company that delivers


How the Threat Was Discovered


egasus was first identified in August 2016 when human rights campaigner Ahmed Mansoor received a message


with a link promising him “secret” information about torture being carried out in United Arab Emirates prisons. Suspicious, Mansoor sent the email pitch to tech detectives


Bill Marczak and John Scott-Railton at the University of Toronto. They found that if Mansoor had opened the link, his phone


would have been “jailbroken,” giving the sender unrestricted access to his entire file system and allowing spyware to be


68 NEWSMAX MAXLIFE | MAY 2022


covert systems to intelligence and law enforcement agencies around the world, the publicity is unwelcome — especially when its software is connected to foreign governments that repress free speech and to the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. NSO, The New York Times


reported, has “produced the world’s most powerful cyberweapon.” One of the most glaring examples


of that emerged last December, when a forensics investigation led to representatives of the United Arab


implanted to retrieve future data. The illicit software’s code referenced “Pegasus,” a spyware developed by the Israeli-based NSO Group and sold to various government agencies around the world.


In a report on their findings, Marczak and Scott- Railton urged strong legal and regulatory scrutiny of spyware firms, whose products they say enable governments and agencies, “especially those operating without strong oversight, to target and harass journalists, activists, and human rights workers.”


CROSSING/LEOPATRIZI©ISTOCK / CELL/JOEL SAGET/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES


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