InvestigationThe company, which is at the center of “global” revelations, has been at the forefront of telephone surveillance for ten years. The human rights abuses that have erupted over the years have not slowed its rise.
Seen from the outside, the phone looks very casual. Announcements illuminate the screen, while exchanges accumulate in messaging applications. Calls are audible, web browsing is smooth and the camera works. There is no indication that a sophisticated spyware is indirectly breaking the phone to control it. The main advantage of a new type of digital weapon called spyware called Pegasus is this theft.
On behalf of several states, the Federation of Banned Stories of Journalists and Amnesty International was able to consult with more than 50,000 phone numbers selected as potential targets of this malware, and shared it with sixteen media outlets. The world. Among these goals, it does not refer to members of the dominant terrorist groups or criminal organizations, but to lawyers, journalists, activists, heads of state from fifty countries, diplomats and senior intelligence officials.
Once plugged into a smartphone, whether it’s an iPhone or Android, Pegasus not only allows you to listen to calls made and received by phones that affect it. In the era of encrypted messaging, wiretapping provided only a relative interest. The software allows you to access all the contents of the phone: photos, emails, contacts, SMS and even messages exchanged through secure applications such as Signal or WhatsApp. It also has some James Bond style features such as the ability to remotely activate the phone’s microphone.
Unlike most Internet surveillance tools, Pegasus was not designed by an isolated hacker or by agents of the Russian, American or Chinese spy service. It is the primary product of the NSO Group, a private company, which has already sold to about 40 states around the world. This Israeli company – investigation The world And Prohibited Stories shows that it is in the hands of dishonest states as an erosive tool for human rights – and has established itself as the head of the top secret digital surveillance department in a few years.
Elite hackers
NSO is, above all, the stories of “N”, “S” and “O” to its three co-founders, New Carmi, Shalev Julio and Omri Lavi. When they formed the company in 2009, they were far removed from digital surveillance. Their launch created technology that is capable of recognizing the objects in a video and provides the viewer with a link to buy them.
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