What is Pegasus?
Pegasus is a software (spyware/program) produced by the Israeli surveillance firm, NSO Group Technologies, a technology cybersecurity firm . Pegasus sends a malware link to the target user and once the user clicks on it, the code that allows the surveillance is installed on the person’s phone. According to Citizen’s Lab, once Pegasus is installed and the phone is exploited, the attacker has complete access to the target user’s phone. It then begins contacting the operator’s command and control (C&C) servers to receive and execute operators’ commands and send back the target’s private data, including passwords, contact lists, calendar events, text messages, and live voice calls from popular mobile messaging apps. The operator can even turn on the phone’s camera and microphone to capture activity in the phone’s vicinity. The use of Pegasus’s software to spy, first emerged in 2016, when Ahmed Mansoor, a human rights activist in the UAE, was targeted with an SMS link o...