Hacking has already become so common with the evolving times and advancing technology. However, while we all thought we were safe from chips and malicious websites until and unless we actually were directed to pages holding malware, an Israeli based company completely changed this thought process.
The Israeli firm called NSO Group has a spyware called Pegasus which it sells to government and law enforcement agencies in various countries. The tricky part about this is that it can hack users without much of an interaction. What we mean by this is that most of the times when a person is affected by a malware they receive a weird text, or email responding or interacting to which leads to the malware being activated. However, in this case no interaction is required for the malware to do its work.
The Pegasus spyware is known to affect both Apple and Android systems equally, but this is not the topic of conversation today.
Now that we have background on how this spyware works, let’s enlighten you about the United States actions against it. The US government has labelled this spyware as a national security threat. Considering how slyly anyone can input it anywhere and the user won’t know, the government has added it on the Entity List, which means any export, import or selling related to this company’s product is now banned within the States.
According to several reports on the background check of this spyware, the company though was selling this spyware to only governments, its buyers were basically countries with poor human rights record, who were using the saved information to attack journalists and other people they felt were threats.
The United States government and its BIC believes that the spyware is definitely a threat which is being used to target journalists, businessmen, politicians and several other important people that are running the country and hence the crossing of any device from countries like Israel, Russia, and Singapore and this NSO group has severely been banned within the States.
It is United States measure to protect its people and its country. While the US is the leading power of the world, it definitely cannot tolerate other countries spying on it and this spyware seems a rather breach in privacy to a large extent. From our point of view, its ban seems well implemented.
Read next: Apple And The European Union Butt Heads Over A New Proposed Side Loading Act
The Israeli firm called NSO Group has a spyware called Pegasus which it sells to government and law enforcement agencies in various countries. The tricky part about this is that it can hack users without much of an interaction. What we mean by this is that most of the times when a person is affected by a malware they receive a weird text, or email responding or interacting to which leads to the malware being activated. However, in this case no interaction is required for the malware to do its work.
The Pegasus spyware is known to affect both Apple and Android systems equally, but this is not the topic of conversation today.
Now that we have background on how this spyware works, let’s enlighten you about the United States actions against it. The US government has labelled this spyware as a national security threat. Considering how slyly anyone can input it anywhere and the user won’t know, the government has added it on the Entity List, which means any export, import or selling related to this company’s product is now banned within the States.
According to several reports on the background check of this spyware, the company though was selling this spyware to only governments, its buyers were basically countries with poor human rights record, who were using the saved information to attack journalists and other people they felt were threats.
The United States government and its BIC believes that the spyware is definitely a threat which is being used to target journalists, businessmen, politicians and several other important people that are running the country and hence the crossing of any device from countries like Israel, Russia, and Singapore and this NSO group has severely been banned within the States.
It is United States measure to protect its people and its country. While the US is the leading power of the world, it definitely cannot tolerate other countries spying on it and this spyware seems a rather breach in privacy to a large extent. From our point of view, its ban seems well implemented.
Photo: Getty
Read next: Apple And The European Union Butt Heads Over A New Proposed Side Loading Act