The digital research group Citizen Lab declared this Thursday that they found a spy program linked to the Israeli company Niv, Shalev and Omri (NSO) that takes advantage of a flaw to insert itself into Apple devices.
Thus, when inspecting the Apple device of an employee of a civil society group in Washington, researchers found a flaw that was used to infect the device with the Pegasus spy software, developed by NSO.
“This latest finding demonstrates once again that civil society is targeted by very sophisticated software tools and mercenary spy programs,” reads the Citizen Lab statement.
Likewise, Apple published an emergency software update, while Citizen Lab recommended updating the devices and assured, after confirming with the technology company, that the use of the high security function ‘lock mode’ hinders this attack in particular.
Spy software
Pegasus is capable of surreptitiously reading encrypted messages stored on phones, turning on the camera and microphone remotely, and continuously tracking the location of the mobile phone. In addition, it has been linked to human rights abuses in Mexico and East Africa, which is why the Israeli company is blacklisted by the US Department of Commerce, according to the Financial Times.
“We cannot respond to accusations that do not include any supporting investigation,” said the NSO company, replicated by the media.
In addition, Citizen Lab, based at the University of Toronto (Canada), has already tracked this spy software hundreds of times on the phones of hundreds of journalists, lawyers, dissidents and opposition leaders in countries with a history of human rights. weak. With RT