The million-dollar reporter How attackers hijacked the phone of Meduza co-founder Galina Timchenko, making her the first Russian journalist to be infected with Pegasus spyware — Meduza
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The public has known for years that governments around the world use software developed by an Israeli cyber-arms company to spy on journalists, opposition politicians, and activists. Investigative journalists published a series of bombshell reports in July 2021 about the widespread abuse of Pegasus, a powerful tool marketed exclusively to state clients for use against only the grisliest criminals. Earlier this summer, Meduza learned that the iPhone of our co-founder and publisher, Galina Timchenko, was infected with Pegasus mere hours before she joined a private conference in Berlin attended by colleagues in the exiled Russian independent media. This is the first confirmed case of a Pegasus attack against a Russian journalist. With help from experts at Access Now and Citizen Lab, Meduza reports what we know about this notorious spyware, how it’s been used in Europe, and which states might have spent millions of dollars to hijack Ms. Timchenko’s phone.

Pegasus is a highly sophisticated and controversial spyware tool developed by the Israeli cybersecurity firm NSO Group. Pegasus is designed to infiltrate and infect mobile devices, including smartphones, and it allows the attacker to remotely monitor and collect a wide range of information from the compromised device. This information can include text messages, call logs, emails, GPS location data, and more. It can also be used to activate the device’s microphone and camera for audio and video surveillance.

  • @[email protected]English
    17•1 year ago

    Well, that’s most terrifying. Can you do anything about it except not using smartphones?

    • VoyagerOPEnglish
      18•1 year ago

      I’m using GrapheneOS for added security and sandboxing, but I feel that this is a bandaid solution.

    • @chrispheroEnglish
      9•1 year ago

      Unfortunately, as far as I understand it, not really. NSO and for sure many other companies offering similar spy software use multiple 0-day exploits to get into your device.

      At least for the Pegasus one, a system restart seems to do the trick in removing it in most cases, although there are some reports on surviving even a factory reset on some phones…

      The other question is, if you are not a person of interest like a high-ranking politician or journalist, you are most likely not going to be a target of an attack. On the other hand, you never know… and that’s the really scary part.

      • @[email protected]English
        3•1 year ago

        a person of interest

        Thanks for the reminder.

        article:

        journalists, opposition politicians, and activists

        wikipedia: pretty much anybody of interests of the people with the ability to acquire the service

        journalists, lawyers, political dissidents, and human rights activists

        scholars, bureaucrats (India)

        politicians: head of stead (Iraq), mayors (Israel), associates (Israel), politicians (Israel), son of prime-minister (Israel), presidential candidate and associates (Mexico), prime minister (Morocco), King (Morocco)

        government employees (Israel), government officials (Israel), ex government officials (Israel), military officials (Morocco)

        employees of government-owned companies (Israel),

        suspects (Israel), drug cartels (Mexico), criminal (Netherlands)

        civil society members

        heads of corporations (Israel)

        Panama: foreign spying, including for spying on political opponents, magistrates, union leaders, and business competitors, with Martinelli allegedly going so far as to order the surveillance of his mistress using Pegasus.[5]

        • @chrispheroEnglish
          3•1 year ago

          Yup, the rabbit hole is quite deep. That’s only the people we know to have been targeted by this version Pegasus, I’m sure the dark figure is much higher.

    • @[email protected]English
      8•1 year ago

      I would say to just keep your OS and software and such up to date, enable features like Lockdown Mode on iOS if available to you, and just generally have good security practices. Really not much else you can do.

    • @jimbolauskiEnglish
      8•1 year ago

      The protocol for how to subvert this type of tracking is all ready known. You have to use burrner phones and swap out every couple of weeks. Don’t take any electronics to sensitive meetings.