The World’s Most Terrifying Spyware | Investigators

pegasus can do things on your phone that you can't even do it can activate any function on your phone it completely mirrors it amnesty international reports a massive leak of 50 000 phone numbers i think what the project is showing is the breadth and the scale of the abuse at the center of the probe is the pegasus spyware it can look for your cameras it can also take pictures it accesses your messages your history it can listen to what you say and can also record you so yeah pegasus is is pretty terrifying so what is pegasus it's a software created by an israeli company called nso group and the company says it's designed to attract terrorists jamal khashoggi a saudi journalist and was murdered [Music] several of the people that he was in touch with were surveyed by pegasus that should stop everyone and make us think cyber weapons are weapons people get killed [Music] my name is ial weitzman i am the director of forensic architecture and also a professor at goldsmiths i'm shuri molavi i'm the lead israel palestine researcher at forensic architecture people think of architecture as simply the kind of the design of objects and spaces but architecture is a very useful tool in actually mapping human rights violations that are caught on camera we use spatial and media methodologies and technologies to investigate state and corporate violence we investigate police forces we investigate the military we investigate sometimes secret services architects and artists scholars researchers designers developers working together on a single investigation we worked very often on israeli colonial violence in palestine until now that has mainly involved things like checkpoints roadblocks military and police violence against palestinians today contemporary colonialism is also digital you need to control people and this is where the nso group comes in the nso group is an israeli cyber surveillance company it has emerged in the context of a whole ecosystem that emerged out of israeli state surveillance of palestinians the problem with pegas is that we don't know a lot of information what we know is that the hack will either come in the form of a one click a hack which means that you get a message on your phone you click on that message and then your phone is hacked or it comes in the form of a zero click and this is where the missed call on your phone is able to hack your phone later version of pegasus they just send you a message and the message carries the malware this is called the whatsapp hack the nso found vulnerability within whatsapp and used the software to actually as a doorway into people's phones pegasus is sort of setting the stage for the new terrain of warfare against activists and civil society groups around the world pegasus was on our radar for three four years we first heard about pegasus when we were invited to investigate the 2014 disappearance of the students of ayote napa but they've entered the town of iguala and disappeared there is we collected enormous amount of information about that act of disappearance videos photographs phone calls cctv camera footage there's evidence according to our investigation that there was state collusion and state involvement in that disappearance that was an extremely controversial case in mexico exposing a huge level of state complicity when reporters like carmen aristegui begins to report on it or lawyers like centro pro try to hold the state accountable and petition they become targets of the state and it's exactly these people who were targeted by pegasus we understood that the state is very interested in our investigation that it felt threatened by what we were discovering we knew personally many of the people that were on that list and we understood that we needed to act our friends and our collaborators were targeted by pegasus so naturally we started to use our own skill sets and what we could do was actually use the sort of open source ethos of forensic architecture so open source investigation is looking at everything that's in the public domain everything that is posted everything that is mentioned that is accessible to us publicly each story and each target of nso was reported on in isolation we started to look at every report and article account of hacking that we could find so by collecting information from india and rwanda from palestine and from mexico putting them together in a platform a 3d interactive space that allows you to see physical violence digital violence corporate transactions exposures of hacks and contextual events our ethos of open source investigation allow us to gain another insight nso has gone on a pr campaign to talk about why pegasus is significant why it's important for governments to have access to pegasus and a large part of the discussion is anti-terror now what we've found in this in this process that the people that were most interesting for those repressive regimes we're actually investigators these are journalists activists opposition figures religious figures dissenters people living in exile community organizers far from what anyone would imagine a so-called terrorist to be knowing that you are targeted extract a huge psychological toll on you perhaps do not want to speak to people because you don't want to compromise them so you stop communicating pegasus cuts the network of practice that confronts state crimes i've spent the past year and a half talking to over a dozen targets of pegasus so these are people who had experiences with arrests and imprisonment and yet when they were describing their experience of hacking some were close to tears they were talking about nightmares psychological distress emotional distress our project is really a way to push back at this this attempt by states to cut those networks i think people connect to this story intuitively because everyone now has a smartphone and when your smartphone becomes a surveillance device people are terrified and they're justifiably terrified it's terrifying some of the strongest people in the world pegasus is so advanced that it's very difficult to capture all of the instances of hacking now we collected this information knowing that it's only a fraction of what the actual hacks are with this limited data set we're still able to determine patterns and relations of how digital violence works and in determining patterns and relations you're also able to tell a story that of course the terrain of warfare in mexico is very different than the terrain of warfare in saudi arabia but when you place them alongside each other you realize that physical and digital operate in very similar ways in both of these spaces when we launched that project we had people from all over the world speak about their experience mexicans were surroundings palestinians with emiratis people from all over the world actually joined by being targeted by this malware and happily i mean if there's one thing that i'm walking away from with this project is that it is a failed project on behalf of the state people are not silencing if anything they are becoming more empowered more organized angrier standing up and saying we continue our work we continue resisting we will call our states to account and we are not afraid we are creating networks to push back against all of that silencing and cutting that software like pegasus does [Music] you

Channel: VICE News

Views: 624,060

Rating: 4.8328981 out of 5

Keywords: VICE News, VICE News Tonight, VICE on HBO, news, vice video, VICE on SHOWTIME, vice news 2020, Spyware, pegasus, Eyal Weizman, Shourideh Molavi, Forensic Architecture, Pegasus spyware, pegasus malware, smartphone, yt:cc=on, documentary, documentaries, docs, interview, culture, lifestyle, world, exclusive, independent, underground, videos, journalism, vice guide, vice.com, vice, vice magazine, vice mag, vice videos, short film, VWN, Vice World News, world news, investigators, forensic architecture

Id: QX7X4Ywuotc

Length: 10min 19sec (619 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 02 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/slip-7]

So, is this just a moment where we all come together to talk about our feelings and how we should be scared or is somebody going to tell us how to protect against the damn thing?

[u/BobLablawLawBlogFTW]

This story broke weeks ago and I can't understand why it's not being talked about more? This is some serious shit, the people caught up already are heavy hitters, us regular folks don't stand a chance. This technology must be OUTLAWED!

[u/jaceinthebox]

I think they would remove it from my phone pretty quick once they have listened to my daughter play baby shark for the 10th time in a row.

[u/cptbeard]

since it doesn't appear to be mentioned yet Darknet Diaries podcast's 100th episode was about NSO

https://darknetdiaries.com/transcript/100/

[u/TeamShonuff]

Hope you like dubstep, Pegasus.

[u/DonBuka3]

The Al Jazeera documentary about Pegasus was quite terrifying as well.

[u/Tha_Watcher]

Yeah, it's just like an app called Cerberus!

[u/the_real_abraham]

Jokes on you. I can't remember the last time I used a phone to make a phone call.

[u/johntuffy]

Can't hack my phone .... I don't have one LOL :)