What We Know About the Secretive Company Behind the Pegasus Spy Software
The Israeli technology firm NSO GROUP has become notorious for its impressively sneaky and effective spyware, called Pegasus, and the laundry list of controversies involving how that software has been used, and a recently released investigation has sparked a new one this week. But how much do we really know about the company that’s behind Pegasus?
NSO Group first came under major scrutiny for their surveillance technology in 2016, when analyses by the NGOs Citizen Lab and Lookout Mobile Security discovered that the firm had exploited “zero-days”—unpatched security vulnerabilities—on Apple’s iOS. All it took was one click of a link sent through a text message for Pegasus to be installed on a user’s phone. Once on the phone, Pegasus enables keystroke monitoring of all communications, as well as enabling Pegasus operators to remotely record audio and video using the hacked phone’s camera and microphone. The discovery of Pegasus spyware on the phone of United Arab Emirates human rights activist Ahmed Mansoor highlighted the ability of governments to abuse Pegasus by targeting political dissidents rather than terrorists and serious criminals.
Since 2016, NSO has faced multiple accusations that Pegasus is being used to target journalists and activists around the world. These include Mexican journalist Rafael Cabrera, Citizen Lab’s own reporters, and the family of murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, among others. The most recent addition to this list of Pegasus’ targets is actually 50,000 additions: reporting consortium The Pegasus Project released a report on Sunday that found a list of over 50,000 phone numbers that they believe were identified as “people of interest” by clients of NSO.
