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FT Exclusive: The Israeli company whose software hacked WhatsApp is now said to claim its spyware can secretly harvest all of a targeted individual’s data from the servers of Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft.
Here’s what we know 👇 ft.com/content/95b914…
Here’s what we know 👇 ft.com/content/95b914…
In May, the FT discovered that a vulnerability in WhatsApp, the end-to-end encrypted messaging app used by 1.5bn people around the world, allowed attackers to inject iPhones and Androids with malware. ft.com/content/95b914…
But we’ve been told this goes beyond WhatsApp. The malware in question, nicknamed Pegasus, is now said to be offering a technique to scrape way more cloud information — including the full history of someone’s location data, archived messages or photos. ft.com/content/95b914…
The company denies promoting hacking tools for cloud services and says its software is only sold to responsible governments to help prevent crimes — but Pegasus has been traced to the phones of human rights activists and journalists globally. ft.com/content/95b914…
This is how the technique is said to work: the software copies the authentication keys of popular services such as Google Drive, Facebook Messenger and iCloud from an infected phone, then impersonates the phone from a separate server. ft.com/content/95b914…
This grants open-ended access to the cloud data of those popular apps without prompting 2-step verification or a warning email on the device targeted, according to a sales document. ft.com/content/95b914…
Security teams at the Silicon Valley companies potentially affected are now investigating the method, which appears to target the industry-wide authentication techniques thought to be secure — until now. ft.com/content/95b914…
The number of people targeted by Pegasus spyware is unknown. Until Big Tech companies fix the problem, there’s an old-fashioned way to thwart attacks: changing the app’s password. ft.com/content/95b914…
For more on the Israeli spyware maker targeting Big Tech, click here: ft.com/content/95b914…
