Tag: pegasus spyware
Nation-state spyware goes mainstream
Commercial surveillance technology targeting smartphones, once the province of spymasters, is now becoming widely available on the open market. It is not only high-profile individuals such as politicians who are now threatened but also business people and ordinary smartphone users. Half of the known zero-day exploits (a previously unknown vulnerability) used against Google and Android devices can be attributed to commercial surveillance vendors (CSVs), according to a new 50-page report from Google, Buying Spying: Insights into Commercial Surveillance Vendors. “The commercial surveillance industry has emerged to fill a lucrative market niche: selling cutting edge technology to governments around the world that exploit vulnerabilities in consumer devices and applications to surreptitiously install spyware on individuals’ devices,” says Google.