In case you have not yet heard about Pegasus. Pegasus is a spyware developed by an israeli company called NSO who claim they sell this spyware only to authorized governments.
Findings of Amnesty International uncovered that Pegasus has been (and likely still is) widely used against all kind of people.
It is no surprise that Pegasus was easy to spread on Android phones, since they do not have essential security measures. However, it was as easy even on iOS devices which was indeed surprising.
This was possible by using an iMessage exploit. It was possible to send invisible iMessage to iPhones to install the spyware without the knowledge of the owner and simply by knowing the iPhones’s mobile phone number.
This was indeed really scary.
The good news is that this issue had been fixed in iOS 14.7. So if you have not yet updated, better update your iPhone or iPad right now!
You are probably wondering now how to find out if you are affected by Pegasus. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to do this.
I gathered every information which is available about Pegasus and even analyzed an iPhone which was infected myself. Unfortunately, I can’t find a reliable way to identify a possible infection from within Network Toolbox and if it’s not reliable I can’t provide a Tool or kind of security scan for Pegasus. Even though a few artifacts could be identified by my App the results would never be reliable enough.
However, if you are experienced enough and like to see if Pegasus is installed on your device, fortunately, People from Amnesty International have developed a Toolkit for this. You can find this Toolkit here:
The basic procedure is to create a Backup of your device and let the Toolkit scan this backup for artifacts of Pegasus. Another option (instead of creating a Backup) is to jailbreak your device for the scan but I won’t recommend that method of course.
Stay safe and don’t trust the evil,
Marcus
P.S. I am already working on the next update of Network Toolbox