The SearchVoat Forum

The investigation by the Guardian and 16 other media organisations suggests widespread and continuing abuse of NSO’s hacking spyware, Pegasus, which the company insists is only intended for use against criminals and terrorists.

A vulnerability in the messaging app WhatsApp has allowed attackersto inject commercial Israeli spyware on to phones, the company and a spyware technology dealer said.
WhatsApp, which is used by 1.5bn people worldwide, discovered in early May that attackers were able to install surveillance software on to both iPhones and Android phones by ringing up targets using the app’s phone call function.

An Israeli company named NSO Group is reportedly behind the hacking tool for iPhones that forced Apple to issue a critical software update on Thursday.
The tool was apparently discovered in a hacking attempt on a human rights activist in the United Arab Emirates, but details on the ultra-secretive company are hard to come by.
That's because NSO Group sells sophisticated hacking tools to governments, militaries, and intelligence agencies — and it tries to keep such a low profile it even changes its name on a regular basis.

Gert-Jan Schenk: We’ve never seen spyware this sophisticated before. The user can’t detect the software on their smartphone, even after it has been contaminated. Plus, no data encryption can effectively protect against [Pegasus]. And its developers discovered three different security flaws that Apple didn’t know about.

doginventer wrote: ↑Sun Jul 18, 2021 9:57 pm It is an outrageous violation of privacy, but I think that they are happy for us to know about it because of the panopticon effect.
The only response I can see beyond taking sensible security precautions is to carry on regardless but include random misinformation wherever practical :)