If you are the one who is active on social media or stays abreast with the latest news, you might have heard of ‘Pegasus Spyware’. Never mind, but your father might be the one who listens to the news all day long and forces you to do so, he also would have known about the fuss created about this very recently. Still, if you have no idea regarding all these, then let us first get to know what ‘Spyware’ is, and then we would jump into the matter of ‘Pegasus Spyware’.
What is Spyware?
According to The Economic Times,
“Spyware is the term given to a category of software that aims to steal personal or organizational information. It is done by performing a set of operations without appropriate user permissions; sometimes even covertly. General actions spyware performs include advertising, collection of personal information and changing user configuration settings of the computer.”
Remember that, personal information can be anything – from passwords to bank account details, files, and folders on your device.
What is the Pegasus Spyware?
Pegasus is the spyware that has been developed by an Israeli private surveillance company, NSO group. This spyware can very easily infiltrate most of the personal information from a device.
The spyware is a similar thing provided to the governments to keep an eye on some suspected people. It is supposed to be more like following someone vigorously. But, due to various data leaks, the general public got to know about Pegasus Spyware. People are not informed before when such spyware is used to spy on them. Pegasus Spyware is free from any kind of harmful thing that might damage your device, the main work of this spyware is collecting information.
How does it infect your phone?
Honestly, it is not so easy for spyware to get into someone’s device and work its way out easily. Since cybersecurity is a great issue that people are aware of, it was somehow hard for the Pegasus Spyware to enter an individual’s cell phone. Below given are the probable methods through which the Pegasus Spyware must have made its way to a mobile phone.
- We often send phishing links without much thinking and we also click on them to see what is going on. That is when Pegasus Spyware can get installed in the background, without your consent.
- There exists a zero-day vulnerability where you face a bug on any app or the operating system, and the manufacturing company has no idea about this. If WhatsApp is targeted for the zero-day vulnerability process; then a simple WhatsApp call to your device is enough for the Pegasus Spyware to put your private information at risk. Leave behind a call, a missed call is enough to do this and the targeted victims had faced this already. Since the Pegasus Spyware deletes its own data from the call logs; you would not even get to know what has happened.
Conclusion
The Pegasus Spyware is appropriate for recording text messages, calls, and get hold of your entire contacts list and gallery. The worst part is that it can even turn on your camera and microphone to record conversations you are having without your consent. So, next time you receive any such indications, stay aware. Because Pegasus is stronger beyond your imagination and can attack more individuals.
Spyware malware is malicious software that can steal your data.
NSO Group created Pegasus software.
Malware is designed to cause damage to a user’s PC or network whereas spyware is designed for collecting personal information.