The European Union’s data protection authority on Tuesday called for a ban on the development and the use of Pegasus-like commercial spyware in the region, calling out the technology’s “unprecedented level of intrusiveness” that could endanger users’ right to privacy.
“Pegasus constitutes a paradigm shift in terms of access to private communications and devices, which is able to affect the very essence of our fundamental rights, in particular the right to privacy,” the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) said in its preliminary remarks. “This fact makes its use incompatible with our democratic values.”
Pegasus is a piece of highly advanced military-grade intrusion software developed by Israeli company NSO Group that’s capable of breaking into smartphones running Android and iOS, turning the devices into a remote monitoring tool capable of extracting sensitive information, recording conversations, and tracking users’ movements.
Besides granting unrestricted access to the targeted devices, Pegasus is stealthily installed on devices by leveraging zero-click exploits, such as KISMET and FORCEDENTRY, that require no interaction from the users. Read more:https://cutt.ly/DPkWlDC