-
Russia appears to be targeting journalists with spyware known as Pegasus.
-
Pegasus is a “zero-click” software, hacking phones by sending texts that don’t need to be opened.
-
The software has targeted dozens of journalists, activists, and politicians in recent years.
Pegasus is an Israeli product, are they selling it to Russia?
One of the key reasons for Israel’s reluctance to help Ukraine win the war militarily is simple: It still works closely with Russia.
Russia is important for Israel’s military operations in neighboring Syria, where Israel has been carrying out airstrikes against Iran-backed militias, mainly those of Hezbollah.
Yeah either something else is involved here or Israel is indeed selling Pegasus to literally any government that requests it. Let’s not forget that NSO group is state funded so those deals clearly do have the approval from the Israeli government.
Nothing to worry folks, here’s what NSO said when it was used to target Khashoggi’s inner circle as he was murdered and dismembered in the Saudi consulate:
NSO denies any wrongdoing. It says the software is intended for use against criminals and terrorists and is made available only to military, law enforcement and intelligence agencies from countries with good human rights records
Now inform everyone else that other countries are targeting with pegasus
*edit: spelling
They do, and they’ve shared the counter measure (lockdown mode) with the world.
If a nation state will individually target someone, they don’t need to doom scroll on insta (nor do they need to). Locking down the phone to the bare minimum for these kind of people is the appropriate level of response.
I don’t know Android. Sorry. Doesn’t locking down to very very limited hardened features goes against everything Android is (highly flexible customizable for power users who’d want to do that kind of stuff)?
As much as I want to believe this is effective, all it looks to do is turn your phone into… a phone.
If they can get cell records, they can track you.
SMS isn’t end-to-end encrypted, once it leaves your phone to the network it’s fair game. Given that Russia controls Russian Telecom, you can be fairly certain that a phone call and an SMS are monitored.
At that point, you’re left with the old school one-time pad. And I can bet on Russia being Russia, so if they see a one-time pad in use, they’re just going to pick you up and beat you to death until you talk.
Which is why these people don’t use sms or standard calling. They use something like Signal.
Lockdown mode was released as a countermeasure specifically against Pegasus the first time it made the rounds as it disables many ways that are commonly exploited as the initial vector point - mainly attachments, links and previews in texts, as well as certain complex web browsing technologies.
I’ve had Lockdown mode on since it’s been released. I miss having 2FA code autofilled from text messages, and there’s the occasional website that’ll need to be whitelisted as it may display an emoji instead of a custom font… but aside from that, it’s barely an inconvenience.
Your telco is always going to be a weak point in a scenario like this, but better that than your phone because a hostile actor sent you a text message that embedded silent persistent spyware.
What are the comments in here… Lol. Anyone able to give a level-headed take on this article/topic? Cheers
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.
Obviously we need multiple adversarial LLMs battling this out. Humans are not solving this problem.
