Le Monde: How do you know that you are an observer of the Israeli Pegasus program?

In the wake of the revelation of the spyware program called Pegasus of the Israeli company "NSO", many journalists, politicians, businessmen and activists are wondering whether their phones were monitored by the countries that use this program?

And the French newspaper Le Monde said

that the concerns of these journalists and activists are legitimate, because NSO chose 50,000 mobile phones around the world, including a thousand in France, to be hacked with the Pegasus program, and it is not known how many. It is still under actual penetration.

The newspaper added that this list is not announced and it is not easy to know whether the mobile phone is infected, because the traces of the hack are hidden in one of the corners of the device that can only be accessed by connecting it to a computer.

Complex detection tools

The newspaper stated that the recent disclosure of the Pegasus program was carried out by a consortium of 17 media outlets, including Le Monde, coordinated by the French non-profit association Forbidden Stories, and with the support of the technical expertise of the non-governmental organization Amnesty International, which She is currently facing many requests that prevent her from providing her expertise in the field of information technology within a reasonable period of time to those who request it.

However, on July 16, the organization released a set of tools to check the presence of Pegasus on any Android or Apple smartphone, along with a complex methodological explanation and a help page, and this was acquired by the American technical media, TechCrunch. The tool, whose interface may seem confusing to ordinary people, can be navigated by typing computer command lines, according to the newspaper.

Until these tools become public, LeMonde says, the detection process still requires certain computer skills and hours of work, in addition to the armament of a computer running Linux or Mac OS.

The newspaper said that it is likely that tests based on the AI ​​methodology will be available to the general public in the future, and may be with an easier-to-use graphical interface, knowing that the tools of NGOs have an open source license and can be copied and modified freely.

The newspaper warned that many parties have claimed on the Internet during the past two days that they provide a reliable "Pegasus test", but Le Monde warns against using these tests that claim to be able to detect spyware, because they may be behind a fraud or malware.