Spyware problems may only increase from now on #Pegasus

Pegasus spyware has been around for years and it has affected citizens all over the world. Many entities have used it to spy on their targets of choice. This spyware can monitor your apps, track your location and harvest your passwords. It can track your calls and read your messages. It can spy on your microphone and camera. It works both on Android and Apple phones. It can remain hidden on your mobile for ages only to self-destruct on detection.

Developed by the Israeli NSO Group it was discovered way back in 2016. A whopping 50,000 exposed numbers were identified. It has been sold to governments who use it to keep a tab on their alleged enemies. While Indians haven’t been spared, Facebook in 2019 filed a suit against NSO over WhatsApp intercepts related to many prominent Indians.

In the olden days whenever any phone tapping scandal emerged, fingers used to be pointed at the Central government as only they had access to this technique. Today spyware nets can be cast by governments, intelligence agencies, large corporations and even terrorist groups. It immediately cannot be clear who is doing the snooping. For example some of the victims include Indian IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, French President Emmanuel Macron and Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan. However in this particular case, Pegasus licenses are issued to only foreign governments.

All this forms part of the “cyber-arms industry” which deals in surveillance tools and other cyberweaponry. While all this was available on the Darknet from the beginning, now governments the world over are indulging in similar tactics. Incidentally the Darknet also has its origins with the US government.

Spyware has its origins way back in 1995 when the Internet was young but became a real threat in the 2000s. It has been taken to a totally different level in the smartphone era where we download apps by the dozen and are connected to the Internet 24X7. Users don’t take mobile security very seriously and many also keep changing their phones every 2 years so don’t really bother. The amount of personal information we put out there is also shocking so such spyware scandals don’t influence the public much. It is all the more alarming because we move around with microphones and cameras in our pockets.

The Covid Crisis has also made things worse because now we suddenly have upped our usage of all devices and are using all of them for work without the companies having much of an option to implement strict security protocols like they would do in the office. With rapid digitization and techceleration (tech acceleration) this problem is going to get much worse though you may not hear (or care) much about it!