{"id":307045,"date":"2021-07-23T17:40:02","date_gmt":"2021-07-23T14:40:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/why-the-booming-surveillance-tech-industry-is-vulnerable-to-corruption-and-abuse\/"},"modified":"2021-07-23T17:40:02","modified_gmt":"2021-07-23T14:40:02","slug":"why-the-booming-surveillance-tech-industry-is-vulnerable-to-corruption-and-abuse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/why-the-booming-surveillance-tech-industry-is-vulnerable-to-corruption-and-abuse\/","title":{"rendered":"#Why the booming surveillance tech industry is vulnerable to corruption and abuse"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Why the booming surveillance tech industry is vulnerable to corruption and abuse<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

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\"Spyware:
\n Credit: Zoomik\/Shutterstock
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The world’s most sophisticated commercially available spyware may be being abused, according to an investigation<\/a> by 17 media<\/a> organizations in ten countries. Intelligence leaks<\/a> and forensic phone analysis<\/a> suggests the surveillance software, called Pegasus<\/a>, has been used to target<\/a> and spy on the phones of human rights activists, investigative journalists, politicians, researchers and academics.<\/p>\n

NSO Group, the Israeli cyber intelligence firm behind Pegasus, insists that it only licenses its spyware to vetted government clients<\/a> in the name of combating transnational crime and terrorism. It has labeled reports from investigative journalists a “vicious and slanderous campaign<\/a>” upon which it will no longer comment.<\/p>\n

Yet the founder and chief executive of NSO Group previously admitted<\/a> that “in some circumstances our customers might misuse the system.” Given that the group has sold its spyware to a reported 40 countries<\/a>, including some with poor records of corruption<\/a> and human rights violations<\/a>, it’s alleged that Pegasus has been significantly misused, undermining the freedom of the press, freedom of thought and free and open democracies.<\/p>\n

These revelations are the latest indication that the spyware industry is out of control, with licensed customers free to spy on political and civilian targets as well as suspected criminals. We may be heading to a world in which no phone is safe<\/a> from such attacks. <\/p>\n

How Pegasus works<\/b><\/p>\n

Pegasus is regarded as the most advanced spyware on the market. It can infiltrate victims’ devices without their even having to click a malicious link\u2014a so-called “zero-click attack<\/a>“. Once inside, the power Pegasus possesses to transform a phone into a surveillance beacon is astounding.
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It immediately sets to work copying messages, pictures, videos and download<\/a>ed content to send to the attacker. As if that’s not insidious enough, Pegasus can record calls and track a target’s location while independently and secretly activating a phone’s camera and microphone. With this capability, an infected phone acts like a fly on the wall, seeing, hearing and reporting back the intimate and sensitive conversations that it watches continuously<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There’s previous evidence of Pegasus misuse. It was implicated in the alleged hacking<\/a> of Jeff Bezos’ phone by the crown prince of Saudi Arabia in 2018. The following year, it was revealed that several Indian lawyers and activists<\/a> had been targeted by a Pegasus attack via WhatsApp. <\/p>\n

The new revelations suggest that Pegasus was used to watch Mexico’s president Andres Manuel Lopez and 50 members<\/a> of his inner circle\u2014including friends, family, doctors, and aides\u2014when he was an opposition politician. Pegasus has also been linked to the surveillance of Rahul Gandhi<\/a>, the current political rival to Indian prime minister Narendra Modi. <\/p>\n

A Pegasus infiltration has also now been found<\/a> among phones belonging to the family and friends of murdered journalist<\/a> Jamal Khashoggi, and there are indications that Pegasus may also have been used by a Mexican NSO client<\/a> to target the Mexican journalist Cecilio Pineda Birto, who was murdered<\/a> in 2017.<\/p>\n


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