Several lawsuits outstanding in 2018 claimed that NSO Group helped clients operate the software and therefore participated in numerous violations of human rights initiated by its clients. It was used in Panama by former president Ricardo Martinelli from 2012 to 2014, who established the Consejo Nacional de Seguridad (National Security Council) for its use. The New York Times and The Times of Israel both reported that it appeared that the United Arab Emirates was using this spyware as early as 2013.
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Regarding how widespread the issue was, Lookout explained in a blog post: "We believe that this spyware has been in the wild for a significant amount of time based on some of the indicators within the code" and pointed out that the code shows signs of a "kernel mapping table that has values all the way back to iOS 7" (released 2013). Citizen Lab linked the attack to the NSO Group. Mansoor sent the link to Citizen Lab, who investigated, with the collaboration of Lookout, finding that if Mansoor had followed the link it would have jailbroken his phone and implanted the spyware into it, in a form of social engineering. Arab human rights defender Ahmed Mansoor received a text message promising "secrets" about torture happening in prisons in the United Arab Emirates by following a link. Pegasus' iOS exploitation was identified in August 2016. 2.1 Pegasus Anonymizing Transmission Network.It showed that Pegasus was able to infect all modern iOS versions up to iOS 14.6, through a zero-click iMessage exploit. In July 2021, widespread media coverage part of the Project Pegasus revelations along with an in-depth analysis by human rights group Amnesty International uncovered that Pegasus was still being widely used against high-profile targets.
Later, in December 2020, the Al Jazeera investigative show The Tip of the Iceberg, Spy partners, exclusively covered Pegasus and its penetration into the phones of media professionals and activists and its use by Israel to eavesdrop on both opponents and allies. On August 23, 2020, according to intelligence obtained by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, NSO Group sold Pegasus spyware software for hundreds of millions of US dollars to the United Arab Emirates and the other Gulf States, for surveillance of anti-regime activists, journalists, and political leaders from rival nations, with encouragement and mediation by the Israeli government. It was called the "most sophisticated" smartphone attack ever, and was the first time that a malicious remote exploit used jailbreaking to gain unrestricted access to an iPhone. News of the spyware caused significant media coverage. Pegasus was discovered in August 2016 after a failed installation attempt on the iPhone of a human rights activist led to an investigation revealing details about the spyware, its abilities, and the security vulnerabilities it exploited. The company states that it provides "authorized governments with technology that helps them combat terror and crime." NSO Group has published sections of contracts which require customers to use its products only for criminal and national security investigations and has stated that it has an industry-leading approach to human rights. NSO Group was previously owned by American private equity firm Francisco Partners, but it was bought back by its founders in 2019.
It is a Trojan horse computer virus that can be sent "flying through the air" to infect cell phones. The spyware is named after Pegasus, the winged horse of Greek mythology.
As of 2016, Pegasus was capable of reading text messages, tracking calls, collecting passwords, location tracking, accessing the target device's microphone and camera, and harvesting information from apps. The 2021 Project Pegasus revelations suggest that the current Pegasus software can exploit all recent iOS versions up to iOS 14.6. Pegasus is spyware developed by the Israeli cyberarms firm NSO Group that can be covertly installed on mobile phones (and other devices) running most versions of iOS and Android.