SUMMARY

SUMMARY

Of

PEGASUS
How a Spy in Your Pocket
Threatens the End of Privacy,
Dignity, and Democracy

By

LAURENT RICHARD, SANDRINE

RIGAUD and RACHEL

MADDOW(Introduction)

BOLD SUMMARIES

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All rights reserved. No part of this

publication should be reprinted or

transmitted through electronic or

mechanical means without prior permission

by the Author, except for citations by critical

users.

Copyright © BOLD-SUMMARIES 2023

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

BOOK REVIEW

ABOUT THE BOOK

PROLOGUE

ABSTRACT

BOOK SUMMARY

EPILOGUE

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TO READERS

This is a summary of (Laurent Richard

and Sandrine Rigaud's book

(Pegasus: How a Spy in Your Pocket

Threatens the End of Privacy,

Dignity, and Democracy). This is not

meant to take the place of the main book;

rather, it is designed to provide you with

essential information on the contents of

the book.

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Laurent Richard, a Paris-based, multi-

award-winning documentary

filmmaker, was named the 2018

European Journalist of the Year at the

Prix Europa in Berlin. Forbidden

Stories, a network of investigative

journalists dedicated to completing the

unfinished business of killed journalists

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so that it is not buried alongside them,

was founded by him.

For over twenty years, Laurent Richard

has produced significant stories for

television. He is the author of

numerous studies revealing the

excesses of the financial sector,

Mossad's clandestine activities, and the

deception of the CIA and Mossad in the

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tobacco industry.

The prestigious European Press Prize,

two George Polk Awards, and the RSF

Impact Prize for the Pegasus Project,

which was published in 2021, are just a

few of the accolades that Forbidden

Stories has received since it was

created.

Journalist Sandrine Rigaud, a French

investigative reporter. She has been the

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editor of Forbidden Stories since 2019 and

was in charge of the Pegasus Project, which

received recognition, as well as the Cartel

Project, an international investigation into

the assassinations of Mexican journalists.

Prior to working on Forbidden Stories, she

made lengthy documentaries for French

television. Bangladesh, Lebanon,

Uzbekistan, Tanzania, and Qatar are among

the places she has reported from.

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BOOK REVIEW

Pegasus is a startling and pressing

book about intrusive cyber surveillance

software that is so sneaky and potent

that it may take control of your cell

phone without your awareness. Richard

and Rigaud explain how authoritarian

regimes can utilize Pegasus software to

spy on dissidents, human rights

campaigners, journalists, and pretty

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much anyone with a mobile phone.

Pegasus is paced like a thriller and depicts a

materialized dystopia where oppressive

regimes buy digital bolt-cutters to hack into

the phones of their opponents and

detractors. But it also illustrates how

investigative journalists may reveal an

armaments market that targets civic society

in the twenty-first century.

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ABOUT THE BOOK

The most efficient and sought-after cyber-

surveillance system available is usually

recognized as Pegasus. The NSO Group, a

private company with its headquarters in

Israel and which developed the technology,

is not reticent to boast that it can foil

terrorists and criminals. In 2019, the co-

founder of NSO stated, "Hundreds of our

colleagues saved the lives of thousands of

people in Europe." This bold claim might be

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accurate, at least in part, but it is not the

complete picture.

The Pegasus system of NSO has not just

been used to apprehend criminals.

Additionally, it has been used to spy on

hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent

people around the world, including

journalists, heads of state, diplomats, human

rights activists, and political opponents.

This spyware is both sneaky and intrusive,

with the ability to infect a private cell phone

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without the owner's knowledge and to carry

out its tasks silently, in the background, and

essentially undetectably. Pegasus can collect

all movies, images, emails, texts, and

passwords—encrypted or not—and monitor

a person's daily movements in real time. It

can even take complete control of the

device's microphones and cameras. This

information can be stolen, kept on remote

servers, and then used to blackmail, bully,

and threaten the victims into silence. Its

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entire scope is still unknown. According to

Edward Snowden, "if they've found a way to

hack one iPhone, they've found a means to

hack all iPhones."

Pegasus takes readers inside the months-

long global investigation that was sparked by

a single spectacular data leak, as well as how

an international group of journalists and

editors discovered that cyber intrusion and

cyber surveillance are occurring on an

astoundingly large scale and with

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exponentially increasing frequency all over

the world.

Pegasus illuminates the lives that have been

completely upended by this unprecedented

threat and reveals the disturbing new ways

authoritarian regimes are undermining the

rights to privacy, freedom of the press, and

freedom of speech. Pegasus is well-

researched and masterfully written.

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PROLOGUE

Laurent created the company and

currently holds the roles of executive

director and editor-in-chief. In July

2021, 17 worldwide media outlets

conducted an investigation under their

direction that exposed how various

nations frequently used the Pegasus

malware to monitor journalists, human

rights activists, political dissidents, and

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others. They collaborated with the

Security Lab of Amnesty International.

The events leading up to and

throughout this inquiry are described in

their most recent book. Sandrine and

Laurent talked about how they

structured this international project,

the challenges they faced with

operational security, and the outcomes

of their work.

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The book looks at a variety of situations

involving cybersecurity, or a lack thereof. By

breaking into phones, the hostile NSO

hackers who are after journalists and

powerful individuals first compromise "the

ark."

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ABSTRACT

A troubling examination of intrusive

spyware that struck journalists and

politicians instead of the intended

target of criminals.

The Israeli business NSO Group

developed Pegasus in 2013, and it made

a fortune selling it to nations that have

little interest in deploying it to combat

the "terrorists, criminals, and

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pedophiles" it was designed to target.

According to French journalists Richard

and Rigaud, Pegasus was created after

Apple refused to give law enforcement

agencies a back door into its phones,

claiming that "the black hats were sure

to get them, too, and might

subsequently cause harm to innocent

people." Governments have utilized

Pegasus to target journalists and

activists who disagree with their

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policies. The authors claim that the

Saudis used Pegasus to track down the

murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Despite the lack of evidence of an

infection, they continue, "traces of

evidence in the Android phone

belonging to Khashoggi's wife, Hanan,

suggested she had been targeted by

Pegasus spyware before his murder."

Along with others, political opponents

of the regimes in India, Hungary, and

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Morocco were also targeted, frequently

before being put behind bars.

Additionally, journalists from Mexico

and Azerbaijan were singled out. In

order to disseminate the work of

electronic forensics to identify the

targets in that leaked database, Richard

and Rigaud enlisted a sizable number of

collaborators, including the Guardian

and the Washington Post, and

coordinated a series of stories that

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illustrated how Pegasus was distributed

via security flaws in the phones. When

it was just an Apple version of SMS, the

latter website claims that "iMessage was

incredibly secure, but it became

significantly less secure after the

program allowed iPhones to download

video, GIFs, and games." Although the

security of Apple and Android phones

has since increased, black hats are

typically one step ahead.

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BOOK SUMMARY

When asked which talent they would

most wish to possess, the majority of

people say invisibility. We desire the

ability to surreptitiously eavesdrop on

others because of our fundamental

desire for knowledge without

consequence.

The invention of the mobile phone, and

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subsequently the smartphone, gave

governments access to the capability of

covert monitoring for the comparatively

small sum of money (several millions of

pounds) needed to license intrusive

software that would discreetly monitor

the phone. The most popular one (that

we are aware of) is known as Pegasus

and was created by an Israeli company

known as NSO.

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Pegasus first emerged as an

unidentified SMS message. If the

recipient clicked on it, the phone would

get infected. Because text messages may

transmit viruses on their own, later

iterations didn't even call for this kind

of contact. As a result, the phone served

as a gateway for the law enforcement,

enabling them to access any file,

discreetly turn on the camera or

microphone, and listen to any call.

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The infection persisted till the phone

was restarted. The controllers would

then become aware and send another

infectious message.

Any superpower has the same inherent

problem as Pegasus: it's too easy and

attractive to resist using it improperly.

NSO and particularly its chief

executive, have publicly claimed that

sales of the software can only be used

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to target criminals. Also, NSO is

aware that using American phone

numbers will only irritate the biggest

beast. However, many authoritarian

countries and those on the brink of

authoritarianism see telling the truth as

a crime and attack both journalists and

lawyers as a result.

NSO suggests that it is unable to

identify the targets. In the opening

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scene of Pegasus, journalists Laurent

Richard and Sandrine Rigaud from the

French investigative news outlet

Forbidden Stories obtain a list of

50,000 phone numbers from all over

the world along with a mysterious

series of dates and times. They discover

that the times, dates, and numbers

correspond to the attempted or

successful infection times on mobile

phones used in various countries. The

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date of the revelation is intriguing as it

relates to a case heard in London in

2021 where it was discovered that

Pegasus was used to spy on a British

lawyer, Baroness Shackleton, and her

client, Princess Haya, who was seeking

a divorce from Dubai ruler Sheikh

Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum.

The researchers created an app that

can assess whether you have been

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infected in a cunning attempt to reverse

the monitoring society.

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EPILOGUE

The main theme of the book is how

the pair organizes media partners, such

as the Guardian, in order to

demonstrate how pervasive this abuse

is. They first put together a team that

can identify who has been attacked. A

former hacker from the LulzSec group,

which for a few crazy months in 2011

made headlines around the world for,

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among other things, leaking the names

of 73,000 X Factor US contestants, and

an app called Truecaller, which once

installed on a phone will upload your

contacts' names and numbers to create

a global "identity list," play key roles in

the book. On infected phones, he

discovers Pegasus' minute remnants.

Overall, it's a celebration of the use of

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hacking and journalism to expose evil

people. The team's efforts also included

the creation of an app that allowed

users to check if they had been infected

by Pegasus. It's a clever attempt to turn

the monitoring society on its head.

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This is an important story for those who

"want to prevent the Orwellian future" of

cyber surveillance.

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