Nowadays, most of the platforms that include Dropbox, Facebook, Google Microsoft, Twitter, and Yahoo work on end-to-end encryption Technology to keep the user’s data safe from any anonymous access. For example, if you want to send a message to your friend, then the end-to-end encryption technology will take the message from your phone, wrap it in a form of a packet, and the message will only be unwrapped on the recipient’s phone. This technology makes sure that anyone in between can’t read the message, even though he was able to intercept the message using anonymous means.
However, the end-to-end encryption policy is not favored by most governments, as it makes it hard for them to spy on bureaucrats, journalists, opposition party members, criminals, and terrorists. At this point, enters the Israeli Technology Firm, NSO Group with their Pegasus spyware.
So, in this post, I am going to answer every question going around Pegasus spyware that includes – what is it, how does it infiltrate smartphones, why did NSO developed Pegasus spyware, and most importantly, how to remove Pegasus spyware from Android and iPhone?
What Is Pegasus Spyware?
Pegasus Spyware is so outrageous and dangerous that most people are not able to understand the impact that it is going to cause to the world. For instance, France President, Emmanuel Macron, changed his phone ever since he found out his name is on the list of people who have been attacked by Pegasus Spyware. In most countries, investigations have already been started by various agencies on this Spyware. But, what exactly is Pegasus spyware?
Pegasus is just a name given to this spyware which is taken from Greek mythology. Whereas, spyware is a kind of software that secretly gets into your smartphone or computer, gathers all the personal information stored in it, and sends the collected data to some anonymous person. This spyware can get access to your camera, location, steal information from your WhatsApp or photos stored in a gallery. In short, the main motto of spyware is to spy or keep an eye on your day-to-day life.
How Does Pegasus Spyware Enters Smartphone?
Now that you know what is Pegasus spyware, you might be wondering how will it enter your smartphone?
During the initial days of Pegasus Spyware, victims used to receive some random links via SMS or WhatsApp. And once the victim clicks on that link, his phone was automatically infected by the Pegasus spyware. But now, the method used for spreading the Pegasus virus has changed. Now, they work on Zero-Click attack Technology, i.e. victim’s device will be affected even though he hasn’t clicked on any malicious website or an app.
The victim will receive a kind of WhatsApp message or a miss call from a random number, and even though the victim doesn’t respond to the missed call, his phone will be affected by the Pegasus Spyware. The person spreading the spyware, just need to know your phone number, and that’s enough for him to spread the spyware on your device. Pegasus spyware can attack both Android and iOS smartphones, and that’s why it’s being considered so dangerous and shocking.
Why NSO Group Developed Pegasus Spyware?
As per NGO claim, they have created Pegasus spyware to help Government Intelligence and Law Enforcement Agencies to catch terrorists and fight against crime and criminals. Recently, the Mexican Government used the Pegasus spyware to catch Mexican drug lord El Chappo.
But, as with everything in the world, Pegasus Spyware also has two sides of the coin. According to recent leaks, various governments and agencies are taking illegitimate advantage of the Pegasus Spyware. They are using it to watch over journalists, opposition parties, protests, in many other ongoing movements in their respective countries.
Nevertheless, without going much deep into the political area of this matter, let’s look at how to remove Pegasus spyware from android and iPhone?
How To Remove Pegasus Spyware From Android And iPhone?
The worst thing about Pegasus Spyware is that we can’t detect the source from where it had come to our device. Once it’s in, it can easily read our SMS, track our locations, use our microphones, and even steal our personal information. However, to do all these things will require permission from our Android or iOS smartphone. Therefore, with the help of some forensic tests, we can easily track down the spyware from this method. So, to remove Pegasus spyware from Android and iPhone we are going to use two tools. First, MVT or, Mobile Verification Toolkit, and second, iMazing (only for iPhone).
Remove Pegasus Spyware From Android And iPhone Using MVT
Mobile Verification Toolkit or MVT is a tool design for the forensic testing of Android and iOS devices. Its main motto is to detect any kind of malware and spyware installed on any smartphone. Luckily, it can even detect Pegasus Spyware installed in both Android and IOS devices. With time, developers are continuously involving the capabilities of this tool. Here are some key features of MVT that you must check for before using this tool to remove Pegasus spyware from Android and iPhone.
- Work with iOS system and apps database, logs, and system analytics.
- Get access to installed applications on Android device.
- Get access to diagnostic information of Android device using the ADB protocol.
- Get access to encrypt iOS backups.
- Create a list of extracted records and detected malicious traces in both Android and iOS smartphone.
Check out the below-mentioned video to know how you can use MVT to remove Pegasus Spyware from Android and iOS smartphones.
Remove Pegasus Spyware From iPhone Using iMazing
If you don’t have much coding skills, then you can use the iMazing tool to detect Pegasus Spyware on your iOS device. This tool is designed by taking MVT as a reference, and it can be installed on both Mac and Windows PC.
The Pegasus Spyware feature is available on the iMazing 2.14 version. The tool is being praised by many experts because of its simple to use interface, and most importantly it doesn’t require any coding knowledge. However, theirs almost a 0.01% chance that your smartphone will be affected by Pegasus Spyware, unless and until you are a famous personality. But still, you can use iMazing to detect Pegasus spyware on your iOS device. You can download iMazing for both Mac and Windows PC by visiting the tool official website.
Just follow the below-mentioned steps to use iMazing to remove Pegasus Spyware from your iPhone.
- After installing iMazing 2.14 or later on your Windows PC or Mac, plug in your iPhone to the computer using a USB cable.
- Click on the key option present at the right side of the iMazing home screen. From a number of options available, click on Detect Spyware.
- In the next window that appears on your screen, click on the Next button to start the spyware detection tool.
- To proceed further, you will now have to download Structured Threat Information Expression (STIX) files from the iMazing server.
- Once the download is completed, you will have to create a local backup of all the data stored on your iPhone for deep analysis. For adding a password to your backed-up iPhone data, you would have to enable Backup Encryption.
- Now the app will automatically make the backup of all the data stored on your iPhone.
- Once iMazing is done with backing up all the data stored on your iPhone, it will decrypt them and search for any malicious files including Pegasus spyware.
After a deep search, you will see whether any spyware is present on your device or not. It will take almost one hour for the complete process.
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