A few days ago, it became known that the malicious Pegasus computer program, created by the Israeli company NSO Group for law enforcement agencies and intelligence services, is widely used to secretly spy on residents of various countries.
According to information security specialists, at least 50,000 devices have been infected worldwide. This number does not seem too high, but Pegasus is very dangerous, allows you to take full control of the smartphone, secretly read messages, eavesdrop on phone conversations, view photos and videos.
Known antiviruses cannot detect Pegasus as this malware exploits vulnerabilities that are unknown to developers of operating systems and antivirus applications.
The human rights organization Amnesty International has developed a program that allows you to identify this malware. It is called MVT (Mobile Verification Toolkit) and its source code is available on GitHub.
The MVT service is suitable for Android and iOS devices, but there are no ready-made solutions for quick installation of the application. They must be designed for a specific device, which can only be done on a Linux or macOS computer.
The service backs up the data from the smartphone to the computer, scans all the data and checks if the device is infected with Pegasus and informs the user if the information from his device can be compromised and transferred to third parties.
This device, in particular, scans data transfer logs, where malicious indicators (information about sending call history, SMS, messages and other things to a remote server) are likely to be found. On iOS, these registers are stored longer than on Android, so it is much easier to detect Pegasus on iPhone. Given the complexity of using the MVT, this tool should only be recommended for users familiar with the technology or those who suspect that Pegasus is spying on them.
Information security experts believe that this spyware is used for targeted surveillance. It does not infect random devices, but only smartphones belonging to specific people whose activities are of interest to those who control this software. Each Pegasus license costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, so surveillance is mostly done on those with valuable information (for example, politicians, business leaders or mainstream media journalists).
Although the Pegasus case has become very popular in the news recently, hundreds of other espionage apps continue to run silently and spy on their victims. Many programs operate in a gray area posing as parental controls or other legitimate applications. Be careful, do not install any kind of application and stay safe./bm/
