How Pegasus gains access to your phone

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What can Pegasus access in your phone?

  • Instant messaging data
  • File retrieval
  • Calendar records
  • Phone calls
  • Social networks (eg it can collect data transmitted over other apps, such as Facebook and WhatsApp)
  • Contact details
  • Browsing history
  • Device settings
  • Network details
  • Location tracking
  • SMS
  • Emails
  • Microphone recording
  • Photos and screenshots
  • It can even record live audio and video.

How it enters your phone

Earlier, Pegasus tricked the owner into clicking on a malicious link. Two Mexican journalists were presented with supposedly compromising photos of their partners; one more received a plea for help finding a missing daughter with a link to a purported portrait. Now, Pegasus doesn’t have to do even that. A simple call to the victim’s device could install the spyware. The victim doesn’t even have to answer the call.

Self-destruct

Like Mission Impossible messages, if Pegasus’ hiding place is found, it can self-destruct. It destroys itself if it cannot communicate with its command-and-control server for over 60 days.

Read the related article
Pegasus: A Spy in the Ointment
Pegasus and the laws