Pegasus Spyware - How Pegasus Hacks Your Phone

Pegasus Spyware – How Pegasus Hacks Your Phone

What does the word ‘Pegasus’ mean?

Table of Contents

This word is from Greek mythology. A mythological white horse with wings. It was called Pegasus. But today, in our modern world, Pegasus is spyware. Spyware is dangerous software viruses that secretly get into your computer or smartphone and give your data to other people.

They can access your camera. They may even record your video through the device’s camera or any other data like your WhatsApp chats or photos. They can extract all to give them to someone else. Basically, spying on you is what this Pegasus spyware does.

How does spyware like Pegasus enter your phone?

Earlier, you would’ve gotten a link through SMS or WhatsApp. Once you’d clicked on the link, your phone could’ve been infected. But today, they’ve improved their technology so much that you don’t even have to click on the link. They’ll send you a WhatsApp message or leave a missed call on your number. Even if you don’t receive the call, the Pegasus spyware can still infect your phone.

And that’s why it’s so dangerous and shocking. They just need to know the phone number. It can attack both Android and iOS devices. And once it has infected the phone, it can do virtually anything. Reading your WhatsApp chats and SMSs. Recording your calls, Monitoring the numbers you’ve called, Accessing your photos, Getting your location by tracking your GPS, Secretly turning on your phone’s camera, Or your phone’s microphone, To record you secretly. All your contact details and passwords, it can access everything.

Who created Pegasus spyware?

The Pegasus spyware is developed by an Israeli company, The NSO Group. The full form of NSO is Niv, Shalev, and Omri, Basically, the names of the three founders of this company.

The biggest question on your mind may be Why was such spyware created? What was the need for it? NSO claims that they created Pegasus so that Government Intelligence and Law Enforcement agencies can use this to fight against crime and terrorism.

For example, the Mexican government has said that they used the Pegasus spyware to capture the Mexican drug lord El Chappo. You’d praise spyware that it is brilliant spyware. It can be used to round up all the terrorists and criminals of the world, that the entire world would become a better place because of this spyware. This spyware would seem like the white horse that has come from the heavens to purge the world of crime and terrorism. But here comes the twist in the story now. Allegedly, this recent leak also included the name of a Mexican journalist.

The Mexican government has allegedly spied on a Mexican journalist using this spyware. That Mexican journalist had exposed several corruption scams in Mexico. Later, this Mexican journalist was murdered. It’s now revealed that Pegasus spyware was actually installed a few days before the murder. On the phone of the journalist’s wife.

How it be protected from such Pegasus-level hacking?

To be protected from such Pegasus-level hacking to do something at an individual level is next to impossible. The only thing you can do is don’t share your phone number with people other than your very close friends or family members. Which is practically not possible for anyone to practice.

But in day-to-day lives, against most of the attacks on your privacy, you can be protected by using a VPN. VPN helps to hide your location and one of the best VPN apps, in my opinion, is NordVPN. NordVPN has more than 5,400 servers across 59 countries. So you can spoof your location among these countries while using the internet. NordVPN works across various devices.

For your smartphone, tablet, and computer. You just need 1 account. It’ll work across multiple devices. And NordVPN is one of the only VPNs that work in countries like China.