In July, NSO became the subject of further scrutiny after Amnesty International, the human rights watchdog, and Forbidden Stories, a group that focuses on free speech, teamed up with a consortium of media organizations on “The Pegasus Project” to publish a list of 50,000 phone numbers, including some used by journalists, government leaders, dissidents and activists, that they said had been selected as targets by NSO’s clients.

Using the zero-click infection method, Pegasus can turn on a user’s camera and microphone, record messages, texts, emails, calls - even those sent via encrypted messaging and phone apps like Signal - and send them back to NSO’s clients at governments around the world.

Known as a “zero click remote exploit,” it is considered the Holy Grail of surveillance because it allows governments, mercenaries and criminals to secretly break into someone’s device without tipping the victim off. The spyware, called Pegasus, used a novel method to invisibly infect Apple devices without victims’ knowledge.

Apple issued emergency software updates for a critical vulnerability in its products on Monday after security researchers uncovered a flaw that allows highly invasive spyware from Israel’s NSO Group to infect anyone’s iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch or Mac computer without so much as a click.Īpple’s security team had worked around the clock to develop a fix since Tuesday, after researchers at Citizen Lab, a cybersecurity watchdog organization at the University of Toronto, discovered that a Saudi activist’s iPhone had been infected with an advanced form of spyware from NSO.

Iphone software update