With this lawsuit, the company with the bitten apple seeks to prohibit the NSO Group from using its spyware on any Apple device.
As they point out from various means, Apple has sued NSO Group, the company responsible for Pegasus spyware, and its parent company, OSY Technologies.. The reason for this demand is that, US company accuses Israeli tech company of spying on iOS users with Pegasus, the software we mentioned before.
In this way, the company with the bitten apple follows in the footsteps of WhatsApp and its parent company Goal, formerly known as Facebook, as you know; since they already had sued NSO Group in 2019. Apple’s idea with this lawsuit is to seek a permanent court order to prohibit the Israeli company from using its surveillance tool on “any Apple software, service or device“, as they recognize it in a statement. Apple also adds that even though the number of victims is quite small on iOS, the abusive actions of the NSO Group cannot be tolerated.
Apple sues NSO Group for spying on iOS users with its Pegasus surveillance software
This claim is also supported by an investigation carried out by The Washington Post along with 16 other media outlets, in addition to having the help of Amnesty International and the non-profit organization Forbidden Stories, in which it was mentioned that Pegasus had spied on some 50,000 phone numbers of various Heads of State, as well as activists and journalists from around the world.
In the statement that we mentioned before, Apple itself has said that Pegasus spyware is created so that governments can access microphones, cameras and other data that can be found on a mobile phone, such as calls, emails, messages and more; whether it is iOS or Android. And also, the most worrying thing, it does all this without having to need any action from the user to give their approval, it was enough to send malicious data to the user with the help of an Apple ID. And as if that were not enough, it does not leave a trace either.
Apple itself ensures that, thanks to the new improvements it offers iOS 15, that Pegasus will no longer be able to do his thing. “We have not observed any evidence of successful remote attacks against devices running iOS 15 and later versions,” adds the American company. This can also be understood as an incentive by Apple for users to always keep your devices updated to the latest versions.
“We have not seen any evidence of successful remote attacks against devices running iOS 15”
The Cupertino company accuses the Israeli surveillance company of “flagrant” violations of its software, in addition to violating federal and state laws. They also say that, this demand is a warning to the NSO Group and other spyware companies. “If you use our software as a weapon against innocent users, researchers, dissidents, activists or journalists, Apple will give you no quarter,” he said. Ivan Krstic, Head of Security Engineering at Apple, as published The New York Times.
It is worth mentioning that this demand comes after at the beginning of the month, Joe Biden’s government blacklisted NSO Group and Candiru, which is another Israeli surveillance company. The reason for this addition is that, according to the US government itself, these companies supply spyware to foreign governments which then use it to attack the phones of journalists and human rights activists, among others.
To go ending, Apple also announced that it would allocate about $ 10 million to organizations that aim to investigate and defend cyber surveillance.. Among those companies, we can find Citizen Lab, which apparently discovered the iOS vulnerability.
Related topics: Technology
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