UPSC Daily Important Topic – 20 September 2021 | Gkseries

PEGASUS SPYWARE

It has been reported that pegasus, that malicious software, has allegedly been used to secretly monitor and spy on an extensive host of public figures in India.

ABOUT

• It is a type of malicious software or malware classified as spyware.
• It is designed to gain access to devices, without the knowledge of users, and gather personal information and relay it back to whoever it is that is using the software to spy.
• Pegasus has been developed by the Israeli farm NSO group that was set up in 2010.
• The earliest version of pegasus discovered, which was captured by researchers in 2016, infected phones through what is called spearphishing – text messages on emails that trick a target into clicking on a malicious link.
• Since then, however, NSO’s attack capabilities have become more advanced. Pegasus infections can be achieved through so-called ” Zero-Click ” attacks, which do not require any interaction from the phone’s owner in order to succeed.