{"id":2601,"date":"2021-11-27T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-11-27T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.techsparx.co.uk\/north\/uncategorized\/controversial-pegasus-spyware-faces-its-day-of-reckoning-john-naughton\/"},"modified":"2025-02-28T14:41:18","modified_gmt":"2025-02-28T14:41:18","slug":"controversial-pegasus-spyware-faces-its-day-of-reckoning-john-naughton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.techsparx.co.uk\/north\/controversial-pegasus-spyware-faces-its-day-of-reckoning-john-naughton\/","title":{"rendered":"Controversial Pegasus spyware faces its day of reckoning | John Naughton"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The  infamous hacking tool is now at the centre of international lawsuits thanks to a courageous research lab<\/p>\n<p>If you were compiling a list of the most toxic tech companies, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/technology\/facebook\">Facebook<\/a> &ndash; strangely &ndash; would not come out on top. First place belongs to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nsogroup.com\/\">NSO<\/a>, an outfit of which most people have probably never heard. Wikipedia tells us that <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/NSO_Group\">&ldquo;NSO Group<\/a> is an Israeli technology firm primarily known for its proprietary spyware Pegasus, which is capable of remote zero-click surveillance of smartphones&rdquo;.<\/p>\n<p>Pause for a moment on that phrase: &ldquo;remote zero-click surveillance of smartphones&rdquo;. Most smartphone users assume that the ability of a hacker to penetrate their device relies upon the user doing something careless or naive &ndash; clicking on a weblink, or opening an attachment. And in most cases they would be right in that assumption. But Pegasus can get in without the user doing anything untoward. And once in, it turns everything on the device into an open book for whoever deployed the malware.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2021\/nov\/27\/notorious-pegasus-spyware-faces-its-day-of-reckoning\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The infamous hacking tool is now at the centre of international lawsuits thanks to a courageous research lab If you were compiling a list of the most toxic tech companies, Facebook &ndash; strangely &ndash; would not come out on top. First place belongs to NSO, an outfit of which most people have probably never heard. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2602,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Controversial Pegasus spyware faces its day of reckoning | John Naughton - Regional technology news - North - TechSparx - Business technology stories in the North<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.techsparx.co.uk\/north\/controversial-pegasus-spyware-faces-its-day-of-reckoning-john-naughton\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Controversial Pegasus spyware faces its day of reckoning | John Naughton - Regional technology news - North - TechSparx - Business technology stories in the North\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The infamous hacking tool is now at the centre of international lawsuits thanks to a courageous research lab If you were compiling a list of the most toxic tech companies, Facebook &ndash; strangely &ndash; would not come out on top. First place belongs to NSO, an outfit of which most people have probably never heard. 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