Yesterday, several major newsrooms around the world broadcast what appears to bethe most significant spy scandal since the Snowden affair of 2013. This is about the discovery of several large-scale surveillance operationscovering over 50,000 phones, Android et iPhone.
The software used in this context is calledPegasus. It is signed by the Israeli company NSO Group, which has become a specialist in computer hacking solutions for governments. But if the NSO Group has so far shied away from a use designed above all to fight against terrorism, in reality, as proven by the various articles published on the subject over the past few hours, the situation seems to be quite different.
Thousands of journalists, heads of state, lawyers, diplomats, senior officials of intelligence services, have therefore been targeted by Pegasus in recent years,in more than 50 countries. And the victims could have done nothing to protect themselves from the attack,according to LesEchos. This is because Pegasus can be streamed remotely, without requiring a link to click on the target device. It would simply be a matter of taking advantage of flaws in Apple and Google's mobile OS. In addition, Pegasus presents itself as a real data vacuum cleaner.
Contacts, emails, photos, SMS, WhatsApp or Signal discussions, but also GPS positioning, the NSO Group software is extremely powerful, at the moment, however, smartphones, and in particular iPhones, are announced as more secure than ever. And as if that wasn't enough, Pegasus would also allowfor the hacker to remotely activate the phone's microphone, or the camera, and even recover passwords saved on the affected device. Finally, to avoid being detected, Pegasus applies a so-called “hit-and-run” strategy. This means that once the information has been collected, the spyware disappears from the mobile, which makes its subsequent detection extremely difficult.
France, country targeted among dozens of others
The Forbidden Stories organization revealed that Pegasus was used on users' mobiles located in all four corners of the globe: Mexico, India, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and even the European Union, including France, for example. In Hegaxone, the targets include Edwy Plenel of Mediapart, Dominique Simonnot, former journalist at Le Canard chainé, as well as Rosa Moussaoui, of the newspaper l'Humanité, and Éric Zmmour of Le Figaro.
Countries where journalists selected to be targeted live © Forbidden Stories
Who are Pegasus customers? Bahrain, Saudi Arabia Hungary, Morocco, and others. Morocco would also currently be the country most often cited in the case for the surveillance of French citizens. Nearly 1,000 French numbers were counted in the Pegasus target liston behalf of the North African kingdom. Please note, however, that the presence of a telephone number on the list of infected numbers does not guarantee effective hacking of the mobile.
This type of revelation, like those made by Edward Snowden in 2013, has the benefit of pushing manufacturers to plug the flaws as quickly as possible. On the general public side, concern grows year after year regarding surveillance, private data and confidentiality. More and more users no longer hesitate to return to basic so-called “dumb phones”, precisely for fear of seeing their data misused. In our opinion, it may be advisable to turn to smartphones other than iOS and Android smartphones when working on sensitive subjects as a politician, lawyer, journalist, for example. Even if the power of Pegasus raises fears that he could be the target of anyone, at any time, anywhere.
We are now firmly awaiting any casereactions from Apple and Googleon the subject.
i-nfo.fr - Official iPhon.fr app
By : Keleops AG
Editor-in-chief for iPhon.fr. Pierre is like Indiana Jones, looking for the lost iOS trick. Also a long-time Mac user, Apple devices hold no secrets for him. Contact: pierre[a]iphon.fr.
