More than 180 journalists around the world have fallen victim to various operators of the now-infamous Pegasus spyware, developed by Israeli company NSO Group. A new investigation reveals that Apple devices are again at risk, as there are multiple vulnerabilities that can be exploited by the Pegasus spyware even when users are running iOS 14 on their device.
See also: Pegasus spyware: Used to hack mobile journalists and other targets
Last year, Facebook it wanted to buy the infamous Pegasus spyware was reported that in 2017 with the aim of tracking iPhone and iPad users . However, it is said that NSO Group refused to sell Pegasus to the platform for this purpose, as the Israeli company has a strict policy and only gives its tools to governments, government agencies and law enforcement agencies for legitimate use (cases involving national security and law enforcement).
Now, a new report from Citizen Lab shows how effective the Pegasus spyware is even on devices running iOS 14. Security researchers found that the tracking tool facilitated a zero-click attack on the iPhones of nine Bahraini activists between June 2020 and February 2021.
See also: Pegasus spyware: How to see if your iPhone has been hacked
According to the researchers, the attack was based on two zero-click iMessage exploits, which means that the Pegasus spyware could track victims' iPhones without any user interaction. These attacks can be successful without any action from the victim. One of the exploit chains is called KISMET and was discovered in 2020, while the other is completely new and can bypass Apple's Blastdoor protections (the BlastDoor feature was designed to make zero-click exploitation via iMessage more difficult). For this reason, Citizen Labs has named it FORCEDENTRY.
Most worryingly, the attack was also effective on iPhones running an updated version of iOS, with researchers confirming that versions 14.4 and 14.6 are vulnerable to the FORCEDENTRY attack. What is unclear at this point is whether the security update in iOS 14.7.1 offers a fix for this particular exploit. However, Apple is aware of the issue and will add more security protections in the upcoming release of iOS 15.
See also: Is your iPhone safe from Pegasus Spyware?
Citizen Lab believes that at least four of the nine activists who were hacked were targeted by the Bahraini government, which is said to have been using Pegasus spyware since 2017. One of the activists was previously hacked with the same tool in 2019.
The researchers shared a list of targeted phone numbers with the nonprofit organization Forbidden Stories. It confirmed that the numbers associated with five of the compromised iPhones were on the Pegasus Project's list of potential targets for NSO Group clients.
Learn more in Citizen Lab's in-depth report.
Source: TechSpot
