Out of all types of malware, Pegasus has been the most dangerous so far, in this article I’ll be explaining what is Pegasus, what makes it special, and its inner works, as well as what software companies can do about it.
Overview
Pegasus is a spyware program developed by the Israeli company NSO Group, and it’s being actively used by several governments around the world to spy on their opposition, activities and anyone they’d like to spy on, to be specific, this spyware can be used to track text messages, calls, location, and more.
What makes Pegasus special?
Looking at computer viruses within the past years, no matter how powerful they are, the virus needs to be ran by the user, so cautious users can just avoid running it, Pegasus however, uses a zero-click exploit, which means that no user interaction is required to activate it, and that’s what makes it special.
The inner workings of Pegasus
NSO Group is a huge company, and it sells Pegasus to governments around the world for millions of dollars, in the backend, Pegasus uses dangerous Zero-click exploits that are not patched yet by apple (or Google), to get hold of these vulnerabilities, NSO Group pays security researchers bounces much higher than the software companies, and once they have the vulnerabilities, they actively exploit them until the company finds and patches them, which is not an easy task.
What can tech companies do?
To combat Pegasus (and viruses like it), tech companies have a few options, an option is trying to patch the vulnerabilities after they are used by virus maker, or the other option, which is raising bounties to encourage security researchers to report the exploits to the software company rather than virus maker.
Conclusion
Pegasus is a very dangerous virus, and it’s a direct threat to general software security and free speech, as it gives governments who buy it too much power, it’s unclear when Pegasus will be patched, but I hope it’s patched as soon as possible.
