Pegasus downloads threaten our privacy? “This is not a fully functional installation”

The spyware named was developed by the Israeli company NSO Group. The system turns the phone into a listening device; in theory it is intended for criminals and terrorists.

Pegasus can be downloaded for free

Jonathan Scott, an American security expert, posted a sample of the Pegasus program on GitHub on Tuesday. Version 5.1 can be downloaded with the system, which we wrote about on. Scott also included installation instructions, and the files can be downloaded for free.

What could be the consequences of downloading and installing the program on a smartphone? “This is not a fully functional Pegasus installation. It is a component that infects an Android smartphone, which is valuable primarily for security researchers” – explains the website in response to a question sent by Next.gazeta.pl.

“Analyzing the code of this component can help answer questions about how the Pegasus agent works and how it communicates with the operator’s servers. This information may be useful in developing methods to detect this spyware” – we read in the message sent to us.

Niebezpiecznik.pl reminds that the aforementioned Pegasus samples have been available on the Internet for several months.

Citizen Lab about the Pegasus system: One click is enough to get into someone’s bedroom

In December 2021, the Associated Press agency revealed that Pegasus was used, among others, by for surveillance of patron Roman Giertych, who represented leading opposition politicians; It was also spied on the prosecutor Ewa Wrzosek, who opposed the purges in the Polish justice system, and the opposition politician of Senator Krzysztof Brejza – previously the head of the election staff of the Civic Coalition. His phone was attacked with Pegasus 33 times.

According to John Scott Railton of the Citizen Lab, a Canadian research group at the University of Toronto, – In the times of the People’s Republic of Poland, in order to spy on someone, you had to have a network of informants, you had to install microphones and the entire infrastructure in the walls. Now it takes just one click to get into someone’s bedroom, he said.