Guwahati: Pegasus, this particular name has been doing the rounds on media as well as social media for one thing. The Pegasus is a spyware that is capable of hacking your phone.
The spyware or in other words, surveillance software was created by an Israeli Cyber Intelligence firm name NSO (Niv, Shalev, and Omri) Group.
NSO builds sophisticated software or technologies which they sell only to governments. The company claims that the purpose of these techs is for saving lives. The aim is to prevent certain crimes and terror acts.
And, Pegasus is one such software by the firm. It has the capacity to access one’s phone without any consent of the owner. Once the spyware accesses the targeted device, it can easily gather or collect all sorts of personal information from the device. The data can be accessed by the user spying remotely.
What can Pegasus do?
Pegasus is able to read messages, emails and also listen to calls. Along with this, it can take screenshots, access contacts, and the browser history. It does not stop to this, the spyware can hijack the phone’s microphone and camera and use the device as a real-time surveillance device.
A report further claims that purchasing Pegasus can cost up to 500,000 dollars or if converted to Indian money, 3.72 crores approximately.
The spyware’s existence was first reported in 2016 and at that time, it was reported on an iOS version, and later another version was reported on Android. In its earlier stage, the spyware infected phones through links that were sent through SMS but it gradually turned into software that did not need any interaction from the user of the targeted device. These are known as zero-click exploits.
Reports claim that the spyware enters phones through bugs on an already installed application of the mobile device and sometimes, it can even impersonate a different app in order to enter the targeted device.
There are reports claiming that there were about 40 journalists on the Pegasus watch list but why is it relevant to Assam?
Well, it is important to Assam because a report claimed that two personalities from Assam were on the snoop list of the Spyware.
As per The Wire, the persons on the snoop list were the advisor of the All Assam Students’ Union, Samujjal Bhattacharya, and ULFA pro-talks leader, Anup Chetia.
It has been claimed that there are chances of them being on the snoop list because both of them were critical about the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019.
However, these reports are yet to be confirmed and the government is still in denial related to the entire issue.