How to check if your smartphone is infected with Pegasus spyware

A few days ago it became known that the malicious utility called Pegasus, created by the Israeli company NSO Group for law enforcement and intelligence services, was widely used to secretly spy on residents of different countries. According to information security specialists, at least 50,000 devices have been infected worldwide. This number does not seem remarkably high, but Pegasus is very dangerous – it allows you to take full control of the smartphone, secretly read correspondence, listen to telephone conversations, view photos and videos. Popular antiviruses cannot detect Pegasus because this malware exploits zero-day vulnerabilities unknown to operating system and antivirus application developers. The human rights organization Amnesty International has developed a utility that can identify this malware. It's called MVT (Mobile Verification Toolkit) and its source code is available on GitHub. The MVT utility is compatible with Android and iOS, but there are no ready-made solutions for quickly installing the application. They must be compiled for a specific device, which can only be done on a computer running Linux or macOS. The utility saves a backup copy of smartphone data to the computer, scans all data and checks if the device is infected with Pegasus spyware, and informs the user if their device information could be compromised and transferred to third parties. This utility especially analyzes data transfer logs – this is where infection indicators are likely (information about sending call history, SMS, IM messages and other items to a remote server). On iOS, these logs are stored longer than on Android, so it is much easier to detect Pegasus spyware on iPhone. Given the complexity of using the Mobile Verification Toolkit, this utility should only be recommended to tech-savvy users or those who suspect Pegasus is tracking 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 mainly carried out on those with valuable information (for example, politicians, business leaders or journalists from major publications). Although the Pegasus case has become very popular in the news lately, hundreds of other spy apps continue to operate silently and spy on their victims. Many programs operate in a gray area masquerading as parental controls or other legitimate applications. Be careful, practice good digital hygiene and stay safe.

All data comes from the source: http://forbes.com
Article link: https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidbalaban/2021/07/23/how-to-check-if-your-smartphone-is-infected-with-pegasus-spyware/

#pegasus #newscbs #kingworldnews #newstodaycnn #newsworldfox #newsworld #

Please take the opportunity to connect and share this video with your friends and family if you find it useful.