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Russia appears to be targeting journalists with spyware known as Pegasus.
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Pegasus is a “zero-click” software, hacking phones by sending texts that don’t need to be opened.
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The software has targeted dozens of journalists, activists, and politicians in recent years.
At this rate an iPhone will just be Pegasus all the way down. 76 nation states and their rogue black ops will battle for pegasupremacy.
He who hacks harder wins.
(The above is not based on any fact)
But, seriously… 3 (known) years later and Apple doesn’t have a fix for this?
Almost as if it’s intentionally unpatched
Edit: fanboys are a tough crowd. Gheezus.
It’s not like Pegasus is exploiting a single bug in iOS, there are probably hundreds of different ways Pegasus got onto phones over the years. Known security bugs get patched.
Pegasus isn’t a single piece of software, it’s a big toolkit, constantly updated. It’s a race similar to ads vs. ad blockers.
It’s not a problem exclusive to iOS either. Pegasus works on Android phones as well.
Code has been analyzed from several versions of it.
Edit: the code and analysis report available here:
(Edit: it amazes me how much people will defend/rationalize the most valuable corporation ever known to put more effort into the camera being placed 2mm to the left than an exploit that gets people killed.)
That Apple (especially) can’t mitigate against it is pretty damning.
Regardless what Pegasus is made of, it exploits vulnerabilities. Use a rock, a bat, or hard boiled egg and you can break a cheap window. It’s the window that is insecure. Not the methods used.
A trillion dollar company ought to be able to put up a bit more than plexiglass.
And the mega corps ought to be working together on this. Imagine if it got out into the wild.
Remember spectre?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectre_(security_vulnerability)
I am not a lawyer.
hardware based speculation is hard to patch compared to most exploits that are just bad programming mistakes due to two factors. one being its hardware and its hard to patch out hardware and 2. fixing it would lead to severe drop in performance. A name of a very recent one would be Retbleed.
Theres literally a functioning business model of “find zero-day exploits for software X and sell that info to the highest bidder”. There is actively many huge bounties for currently working exploits that you, random dude on the internet, can get if you can show that an unknown bug can be used to gain access to some software. Pegasus is one of the groups buying the exploits and then using it.
It is a perpetual cat and mouse game. Every time that Apple is made aware of an exploit they patch it asap, but that doesn’t mean they’ve fixed every exploit. You can’t fix a bug unless you know it’s there.
But, seriously… 3 (known) years later and Apple doesn’t have a fix for this?
Almost as if it’s intentionally unpatched
Pegasus constantly adapts, evolves, and changes overtime with how it works. Pegasus 3 years ago isn’t the same as Pegasus today. Once a vulnerability is discovered and fixed, they find a new one to exploit and take advantage of. Its a constant battle.
I’m not a big fan of Apple at all, but credit where its due, they have made a pretty good effort to patch Pegasus vulnerabilities whenever they come about, plus have added features like Lockdown Mode to help protect against it even further, etc. This article is literally about Apple even warning journalists to be cautious of it.
Saying Apple is intentionally allowing Pegasus to happen, like you’re claiming, is honestly laughable with all things considered.
they have made a pretty good effort to patch Pegasus vulnerabilities whenever they come about,
I mean, they kind of have to? What’s the alternative, they leave it? Why are we applauding them for basically the bare minimum here?
Apple’s investment in discovering these problems seems pretty poor. There are multiple instances of Google finding exploits for them and then Apple downplays and complains about Google being too alarmist.
Sure, they fix things. But they fucking better, or there’s a very different problem. But their proactive investments in trying to discover them ahead of time seems pathetic.
I think you missed my point, I’m not applauding Apple for doing the bare minimum, and to be clear, I think you absolutely raise fair points, I’m just pointing out that its ridiculous to claim that Apple intentionally allows Pegasus to happen, which is absurd based off the fact they make efforts to patch its vulnerabilities whenever they pop up, add features like Lockdown Mode, and even warn people who could be impacted. Could they do better to be proactive against exploits? Sure, definitely seems like they have room for improvement, but that’s not the same thing as what the person I replied to had implied by acting like Apple intentionally allowed Pegasus to work and was complicit with it.
