What Poses a Greater Privacy Threat Than Facebook? Spyware
WhatsApp’s lawsuit against the spyware company NSO Group is a smart move for Facebook and an important defense of privacy and civil liberties.
A lawsuit that is a genuine step forward for drawing attention to the spyware market and the need for stricter regulation of private surveillance companies like NSO.
Pegasus is a spyware that can be installed on devices running certain versions of iOS, Apple's mobile operating system, developed by the Israeli cyberarms firm, NSO Group
"Facebook is under fierce scrutiny for its decisions about political advertisements and consumer privacy, and its foray into developing a new cryptocurrency. So it makes sense that the company would try to drum up a little positive publicity and remind people that there are tech firms out there that pose much greater threats to privacy, democracy and civil liberties.
As for surveillance, let’s be clear:
We’re talking total surveillance
"Whatever you may think of Facebook, the Israeli spyware company known as the NSO Group — whose products have been used to compromise devices belonging to lawyers, dissidents, journalists and diplomats around the world — is inarguably worse. . ."
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Pegasus:
The ultimate spyware for iOS and Android
April 11, 2017
Apple iPhone and iPad users usually believe they are safe. There’s no malware for iOS, they say. Apple does little to discourage the impression — the “fruit company” doesn’t even allow antivirus solutions in its App Store, because, you know, allegedly they’re not needed.
The keyword here is allegedly. There actually is malware in the wild that targets iOS users — it’s been proved a number of times, and in August 2016 researchers proved it again by revealing the existence of Pegasus, spyware capable of hacking any iPad or iPhone, harvesting data about the victim, and establishing surveillance on them. That discovery made the whole cybersecurity world… uneasy.
At our Security Analyst Summit, researchers from Lookout revealed that Pegasus exists not only for iOS, but for Android as well. The Android version is different in some ways from its iOS predecessor.
Let’s shed some light on Pegasus and explain why we use the word “ultimate” to describe it.
Pegasus: The beginning
Pegasus was discovered thanks to Ahmed Mansoor, a UAE human rights activist, who happened to be one of its targets. It was a spear-phishing attack: He received several SMS messages that contained what he thought were malicious links, so he sent those messages to security experts from Citizen Lab, and they brought another cybersecurity firm, Lookout, to the investigation. . .
Pegasus has been attributed to the NSO Group, an Israeli company whose bread and butter is developing spyware.
That means the malware is commercial — it’s sold to whoever is willing to pay for it.
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