Google reveals how Pegasus spyware hacked into iPhones

Google reveals how Pegasus spyware hacked into iPhones, the software used a vulnerability in iMessages to hack into iPhones without the user’s knowledge. It was allegedly used by governments to spy upon prominent journalists, politicians and activists. A subject matter expert says, after your mobile phone compromise, the best to mark at the time of hacking is your present network has to reduce, while the hacking takes place.

The spyware is accused of hacking into the phones of at least 180 journalists around the world, of which 40 are notable Indian personalities. Now, a Google blog from the Project Zero team called the attacks technically sophisticated exploits and assessed the software to have capabilities rivalling spywares previously thought to be accessible to only a handful of nations.

The company has also faced multiple lawsuits including one in India where the Supreme Court (SC) set up a three-member panel headed by former SC judge RV Raveendran to probe whether the software was used by the government to spy on journalists and other dissidents.

As per the Project Zero blog, a sample of the ForcedEntry exploit was worked upon by the team and Apple’s Security Engineering and Architecture (SEAR) group. Pegasus attacks on iPhones were possible due to the ForcedEntry exploit.

Here, the NSO hackers took advantage of how iMessage handled GIFs to insert a PDF file into an iPhone in the disguise of a GIF. Then, a vulnerability in the compression tool that is used to process texts in images, was exploited by the software.

Although Apple has patched the vulnerability and informed its users who were spied upon using the Pegasus software, there would still be companies developing spywares to hack into iOS and Android devices. With most of our devices being vulnerable, here’s how you can protect your data.