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