Possibly one of the biggest stories in that broke in cyberspace recently has been WhatsApp’s reports that 1,400 of its users were hacked by Pegasus, a spyware tool from Israeli firm NSO Group. Pegasus, it is a spyware where they spy on people through their phone.
HOW PEGASUS WORKS :
- A Pegasus operator must convince a target to click on a specially crafted ‘exploit link’ which allows the operator to penetrate security features on the phone.
- This automatically installs Pegasus without the user’s knowledge or permission.
- Once the phone is exploited and Pegasus installed, it begins contacting the operator’s command and control and send back the target’s private data, including passwords, contact lists, events, text messages, and live voice calls from popular mobile messaging apps.
- The operator can even turn on the phone’s camera and microphone to capture activity in the phone’s vicinity.
WHAT MAKES PEGASUS DANGEROUS?
- What makes Pegasus really dangerous is that it spares no aspect of a person’s identity. It makes older techniques of spying seem relatively harmless.
- What can’t it do would be an easier question to answer. Once on a phone, the spyware has the run of the place.
- It can intercept every call and SMS, read every email and monitor each messaging app.
- Pegasus can also control the phone’s camera and microphone and has access to the device’s location data.
- The app advertises that it can carry out “file retrieval”, which means it could access any document that a target might have stored on their phones
We must all recognise that national security starts with securing the smartphones of every single Indian by embracing technologies such as encryption rather than deploying spyware. This is a core part of our fundamental right to privacy.
Even the government has made it clear that it holds a sovereign right over the data of its citizens. The idea of data sovereignty must include a citizen’s right to privacy.
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