Sep 7 (The Street Press) – On Thursday, researchers from Citizen Lab, a group that watches out for digital issues, reported finding spyware that they connected to an Israeli company called NSO. This spyware took advantage of a recently found problem in Apple devices.
Last week, while checking the Apple device of an employee from a civil society group in Washington, Citizen Lab stated that they discovered the flaw had been used to sneak in NSO’s Pegasus spyware onto the device, as mentioned in their statement.
John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at Citizen Lab based at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, told Reuters, “This shows that civil society is once again serving as the early warning system about really sophisticated attacks.”
Citizen Lab didn’t share additional information about the person affected or the organization.
The flaw enabled attackers to compromise iPhones running the latest iOS version (16.6) without needing any interaction from the device’s owner, according to the digital watchdog.
After looking into the flaws reported by Citizen Lab, Apple has released new updates for its devices. An Apple spokesperson mentioned that they had no additional comments, but Citizen Lab encouraged consumers to update their devices.
NSO, the Israeli company linked to the spyware, did not provide an immediate comment on the Citizen Lab research.
It’s worth noting that the U.S. government blacklisted NSO in 2021 over alleged abuses, such as surveilling government officials and journalists.
