Pegasus (spyware)

Pegasus (spyware), spyware developed by Israeli cyber-intelligence firm NSO Group (founded in 2010) for eavesdropping on mobile phones and harvesting their data. The spyware has been highly controversial, used to track politicians, government leaders, human rights activists, dissidents, and journalists. NSO Group claims its product is sold exclusively to government security and law enforcement agencies and only for the purpose of aiding rescue operations and battling criminals, such as money launderers, sex- and drug-traffickers, and terrorists.

The spyware works on most Android, iOS (Apple), BlackBerry, Windows Phone, and Symbian operating systems, and it can be installed covertly without any action by the device owner. Once installed on a phone, the spyware leaves no obvious trace of its existence. The spyware can monitor calls, capture text messages, track a user’s location, and collect passwords, photos, and other data. Authoritarian and democratic governments have deployed Pegasus, harvesting information through their target’s camera, microphone, and various apps.

Pegasus is not only controversial but very expensive. According to The New York Times, in 2016 the cost was upwards of $650,000, plus a $500,000 set-up fee, to install Pegasus on 10 phones.

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How Pegasus spyware works

Pegasus uses “zero-click” methods to commandeer devices, meaning no action is required by the phone owner for Pegasus to infiltrate its system. Unlike social engineering techniques that require the owner to click a link or visit a website that secretly installs the malware, Pegasus can infect a device via a message or a call through WhatsApp or another service. Even if a user deletes the message and misses or ignores the call, the spyware can self-install.

Once inside a device, Pegasus gains full access to SMS messages, emails, photos, contacts, calendar, GPS data, logs, and any apps and data the phone contains. In fact, the spyware can even gain access to encrypted data and messages by intercepting them prior to the encryption process. Pegasus uses a “jailbreaking” process on iPhones and a technique called “rooting” on Android phones to hack the devices. This allows the entity installing it to further modify the phone. Built-in security controls on the phone are essentially disabled.

As a result, the attacker can track a person’s location, monitor communications, and gain access to sensitive and private data and information. If Pegasus cannot gain zero-click access, it uses deceptive social engineering techniques to bait users into granting access.

History and uses of Pegasus spyware

The term “Pegasus” refers to the winged horse of Greek mythology, and the spyware belongs to a broader group of malware known as Trojan horses. Although NSO Group was founded in 2010, its spyware only became widely known in 2016, when a human rights activist in the United Arab Emirates became suspicious about a text message he received and forwarded it to a cybersecurity lab for analysis.

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Although the exact number of countries using Pegasus is unknown—the NSO Group keeps its client list confidential—reports in 2021 claimed that some 40 countries had access to the spyware and that individuals in more than 50 countries had been targets of Pegasus. In Mexico, for example, the spyware assisted in the 2016 arrest of drug cartel leader El Chapo, and two years later the Saudi Arabian government used it to track Saudi journalist and U.S. resident Jamal Khashoggi. Months before Khashoggi’s murder and dismemberment by Saudi agents in October 2018, Pegasus had been attached to the phone of Khashoggi’s wife.

Other prominent government and business leaders who reportedly have been targeted and hacked by Pegasus include French president Emmanuel Macron, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, and former Amazon chairman Jeff Bezos, owner of The Washington Post, for which Khashoggi worked.

Ethical concerns about Pegasus spyware

As global concerns about privacy grow, spyware such as Pegasus is attracting greater scrutiny. In 2021, for example, the Pegasus Project—a consortium of more than 80 journalists from 17 media organizations in 10 countries, in conjunction with the Paris-based media group Forbidden Stories, with technical assistance from Amnesty International—focused global attention on the spyware and its suspected use in facilitating human rights violations around the world. At the heart of its investigation was a leaked list of more than 50,000 phone numbers reportedly targeted by Pegasus and its client countries. Investigations into Pegasus continue today. However, because there is largely no way to block or regulate the spyware, governments—especially authoritarian regimes—continue to rely on it for monitoring not only criminals but prominent politicians, journalists, lawyers, and dissidents.

Pegasus has been classified as a weapon in Israel, and any export of the technology must be approved by the government. In 2019 Facebook (now Meta Platforms) sued NSO Group under the United States Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. In 2021 Apple also sued, and U.S. President Joseph Biden blacklisted the company, making it illegal for U.S. firms to sell technology to NSO Group.