In recent weeks, the issue of mobile phone espionage on various figures in Spanish politics has caused quite a stir. The Pegasus scandal. Surely, reading the press and listening to the news, you have asked yourself this question: How to know if my mobile has Pegasus? In this article we are going to shed a little light on this dark subject.
The first thing to know is that no mobile phone is safe from being spied on. You may think that you are not a target of spyware, that you are not an important political figure or that you have nothing to hide. Although this is true, it does not free us from being susceptible to being infected by programs similar to Pegasus.
What is Pegasus?
How to know if my mobile is infected by Pegasus
Pegasus is a spy program created by the Israeli company NSO Group. This is really sophisticated software and much more dangerous than most known spyware programs.
To be fair, it must be said that the Pegasus program was originally created as a technological weapon to fight against terrorism and organized crime. Initially it was only available to intelligence services of certain countries, which undertook to make responsible use of this technology. Apparently, this has not been the case in all cases. Today nobody can be sure for what purposes this software has been used and how many users have been spied on.
When Pegasus manages to access a mobile phone, all the information it contains is automatically revealed: calls, messages, downloaded documents, contacts, GPS location... All our activity, our movements and our digital life, exposed to outside eyes.
What's more, the hacker who sneaks Pegasus into a phone can also activate the microphone, camera or recorder without the user noticing. This is how they steal our most precious treasure: intimacy, privacy and security.
See also: Anti Spyware: what is it and what are the best programs to avoid it
How Pegasus accesses our phones
How to know if my mobile is infected by Pegasus
Everything that surrounds Pegasus is still dark and unknown. It is not really known for sure what is the way by which this program manages to infect our devices. However, presumably it uses the same gateways as other spyware programs.
Cybersecurity experts believe that Pegasus could use the classic entry methods of viruses: through a link contained in a email, in a message from WhatsApp or a SMS misleading. However, it is also possible that you are using more sophisticated and undetectable input modes.
In short, it is difficult to guess how this spyware has gotten into our mobile, but we can know if it has. We explain how to find out:
Mobile Verification Toolkit (MVT)
Mobile Verification Toolkit (MVT) to detect Pegasus infections on our phones
Thus, when asked "how to know if my mobile is infected by Pegasus", the best resource we currently have is a tool called Mobile Verification Toolkit (MVT). This has been developed by experts in digital security in collaboration with Amnesty International.
More than one tool, we should talk about several, a complete kit, designed specifically to identify infections of Pegasus and similar programs on Android and iOS devices.
On Android
In order to check whether Pegasus and other spyware have accessed our mobile, it is necessary download the python package, which is hosted on the same MVT page along with the download and installation instructions. We have to follow them step by step to perform a complete scan of our Android phone.
On iOS
In the case of iPhone and iOS devices, it is necessary first install Xcode and homebrew. It is necessary to know that both the installation and the use of this tool require certain knowledge, since they are somewhat complex processes for uninitiated users.
In both cases, the Mobile Verification Toolkit will ask us to have access to our data through backups. This may arouse some resentment in some users (after all, they are resorting to another program to preserve their privacy), although you have to know that this for mobile devices to report the It is totally safe and reliable.
Some precautions
Finally, it is worth delving into the old saying "better safe than sorry". If you suspect that your phone could be targeted by Pegasus or any other type of spyware, the following is recommended:
- Always keep our devices and applications updated. This will make it more difficult for these programs to find vulnerabilities and security holes to infect our phones.
- Use the phone with common sense, deleting suspicious messages and not clicking on unknown links.