Why Apple’s walled garden is no match for Pegasus spyware
Up for discussion in the Guardian tech newsletter: Spotlight on Apple security … shake-up in the video game market … online age verification … and space tourism
You will, by now, have heard about Pegasus. It’s the brand name for a family of spyware tools sold by the NSO Group, an Israeli outfit of hackers-for-hire who sell their wares to intelligence agencies, law enforcement, and militaries around the world.
An investigation by the Guardian and 16 other media organisations around the world into a massive data leak suggests widespread abuse of NSO Group’s hacking software by government customers. The company insists it is intended for use only against criminals and terrorists but the investigation has revealed that journalists, human rights activists and opposition politicians are also being targeted. Since our phones are increasingly external brains, storing our lives in digital form, a successful deployment of Pegasus can be devastating. Messages, emails, contact details, GPS location, calendar entries and more can be extracted from the device in a matter of minutes.
On Sunday, the Guardian and its media partners began to publish the results of the investigation into the NSO Group, Pegasus, and the people whose numbers appear on the leaked list:
