Pegasus is the spyware – that is developed, marketed and licensed to governments around the world by the Israeli company NSO Group.

What is Spyware

It has the capability to infect billions of phones running either iOS or Android operating systems.

Pegasus has evolved from using spear-phishing, a process where an attacker tricks the target to click on a malicious link sent via text message or email, to a more sophisticated method of attack called zero-click attacks. This new form of attack has made the software one of the most dangerous spyware that threatens individual’s privacy.

To gain entry, the software identifies zero-day vulnerabilities, meaning flaws in the OS that are not identified yet and hence have not been patched. Instead of exploiting human error, it banks on flaws in the software and hardware system to gain access to a device.

All the hacker does is simply make a WhatsApp call and that initiates access to the OS by launching the code. After planting the malware, Pegasus alters call log so that the user has no knowledge of what happened.