A Comprehensive Analysis of Pegasus Spyware and Its Implications for Digital Privacy and Security
Keywords:
Pegasus spyware, surveillance technology, cybersecurity threats, digital surveillance, privacy breaches, government surveillance, mobile device security, Zero-Day exploits, privacy invasion, cyber espionage.Abstract
This paper comprehensively analyzes the Pegasus spyware and its implications for digital privacy and security. The Israeli cyber intelligence company NSO Group's Pegasus has gained recognition as a potent surveillance tool capable of hacking into smartphones and extracting data without the user's knowledge [49], [50]. The research emphasizes the technical aspects of this spyware, its deployment methods, and the controversies surrounding its use. The research also emphasizes the growing worries surrounding digital privacy and security as a result of the prevalent use of advanced spyware. By delving into legal, ethical, and policy issues, the objective of this study is to deliver a holistic understanding of the challenges posed by Pegasus and similar spyware tools. Through a comprehensive examination of the subject, the paper presents potential solutions to mitigate the threats and protect users from invasive surveillance techniques.
Downloads
References
M. Agrawal, G. Varshney, K.P.S. Saumya, and M. Verma, "Pegasus: Zero-Click spyware attack–its countermeasures and challenges," 2022.
S. Sang and H. Kim, Advanced Persistent Threat: Understanding the Danger and How to Protect Your Organization. CRC Press, 2017.
J. Jakobsson and S. Myers, Eds., Phishing and Countermeasures: Understanding the Increasing Problem of Electronic Identity Theft, Wiley-Interscience, 2006.
Kumar, "A comprehensive study of keyloggers: techniques, detection, and defense mechanisms," Journal of Information Security and Applications, vol. 57, pp. 102785, 2021.
J. Marczak, C. Scott-Railton, C. Guarnieri, and M. Marquis-Boire, "Pegasus Project: A Look into the NSO Group's Spyware and its Deployment," Journal of Cyber Policy, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 1–21, 2021.
Gallagher and N. Mielczarek, "The Rise of Commercial Spyware: Evaluating the Threat to Global Privacy and Security," Journal of Information Warfare, vol. 20, no. 1, pp. 97–111, 2021.
D. Bradbury, "The cyber-arms race: the growing threat of nation-state cyberattacks," Computer Fraud & Security, 2018, no. 5, pp. 5-8, 2018.
J. Mushtaq and M. Sufyan, "A survey on malware detection techniques for mobile devices," International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, vol. 10, no. 3, pp. 292-301, 2019.
Y. Liu, A. Sarabi, J. Zhang, P. Naghizadeh, M. Karir, M. Bailey, and M. Liu, "Cloudy with a Chance of Breach: Forecasting Cyber Security Incidents," in Proceedings of the 24th USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security 15), pp. 1009–1024, 2015.
T. M. Chen and S. Abu-Nimeh, "Lessons from Stuxnet," Computer, vol. 44, no. 4, pp. 91–93, 2011.
D. L. Shinder and M. Cross, Scene of the Crime: Computer Forensics Handbook, Syngress, 2008.
L. Hadlington, "Human factors in cybersecurity: examining the link between Internet addiction, impulsivity, attitudes towards cybersecurity, and risky cybersecurity behaviors," Heliyon, vol. 3, no. 7, e00346, 2017.
K. Zetter, Countdown to Zero Day: Stuxnet and the Launch of the World's First Digital Weapon, Crown, 2014.
R. Anderson and T. Moore, "Information security: where computer science, economics, and psychology meet," Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical, and Engineering Sciences, vol. 367, no. 1888, pp. 2717–2727, 2009.
C. Soghoian and S. Stamm, "Certified lies: Detecting and defeating government interception attacks against SSL," in Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Financial Cryptography and Data Security, pp. 250–29, Springer, 2011.
B. Marczak and J. Scott-Railton, "The million dollar dissident: NSO group’s iPhone zero-days used against a UAE human rights defender," Citizen Lab, no. 24, 2016.
A. Rosenblatt, "International forensic investigations and the human rights of the dead," Hum. Rts. Q., vol. 32, pp. 921, 2010.
B. Marczak, J. Scott-Railton, S. McKune, B. Abdul Razzak, and R. Deibert, "Hide and seek: Tracking NSO group’s Pegasus spyware to operations in 45 countries," 2018.
J.D. Rudie, Z. Katz, S. Kuhbander, and S. Bhunia, "Technical analysis of the NSO group’s Pegasus spyware," in 2021 International Conference on Computational Science and Computational Intelligence (CSCI), pp. 747-752, December 2021. IEEE.
J. Scott-Railton, B. Marczak, B. Abdul Razzak, M. Crete-Nishihata, and R. Deibert, "Reckless exploit: Mexican journalists, lawyers, and a child targeted with NSO spyware," 2017.
Cahn, "Surveillance Export Controls: International Standards for the Global Proliferation of Commercial Spyware," Harvard National Security Journal, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 93–132, 2017.
Kadhim, "The Pegasus spyware controversy: Legal and ethical considerations," Journal of Information Technology & Software Engineering, vol. 11, no. 4, pp. 1–4, 2021.
Zuboff, "Big Other: Surveillance Capitalism and the Prospects of an Information Civilization," Journal of Information Technology, vol. 30, no. 1, pp. 75–89, 2015.
Robinson and M. Turner, "The digital divide and the impact of surveillance: A comparative analysis," Information, Communication, and Society, vol. 23, no. 4, pp. 534-550, 2020.
Lyon, "Surveillance, Snowden, and Big Data: Capacities, Consequences, and Critique," Big Data & Society, vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 1–13, 2014.
Penney, "Chilling Effects: Online Surveillance and Wikipedia Use," Berkeley Technology Law Journal, vol. 31, no. 1, pp. 117–174, 2016.
Amnesty International, "When Best Practices Are Not Enough: Google's Role in Enabling Human Rights Abuses Through the Sale of NSO Group's Pegasus Spyware," 2021.
Rid and B. Buchanan, "Attributing cyber attacks," Journal of Strategic Studies, vol. 38, no. 1, pp. 4–37, 2015.
Narayanan and V. Shmatikov, "Privacy and Security: Myths and Fallacies of 'Personally Identifiable Information,'" Communications of the ACM, vol. 53, no. 6, pp. 24-26, 2010.
Bélanger and R. E. Crossler, "Privacy in the Digital Age: A Review of Information Privacy Research in Information Systems," MIS Quarterly, vol. 35, no. 4, pp. 1017–1041, 2011.
Warren and L. Brandeis, "The Right to Privacy," Harvard Law Review, vol. 4, no. 5, pp. 193-220, 1890.
Cahn, "Surveillance Export Controls: International Standards for the Global Proliferation of Commercial Spyware," Harvard National Security Journal, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 93–132, 2017.
Schneier, "Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World," WW Norton & Company, 2015.
E. Ferdig, K. R. Pytash, R. M. Merchant, and E. N. Nigh, "Digital Literacy and Digital Literacies: Policy, Pedagogy, and Research Considerations for Education," Educational Technology, vol. 56, no. 4, pp. 12–18, 2016.
Zittrain, "The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It," Yale University Press, 2008.
Floridi, "The 4th Revolution: How the Infosphere is Reshaping Human Reality," Oxford University Press, 2014.
Green and I. Miers, "Forward secure asynchronous messaging from puncturable encryption," in 2015 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, San Jose, CA, USA, May 2015, pp. 305–320.
Unger, S. Dechand, J. Bonneau, S. Fahl, H. Perl, I. Goldberg, and M. Smith, "SoK: Secure Messaging," in 2015 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, San Jose, CA, USA, May 2015, pp. 232-249.
M. Bellovin, M. Blaze, S. Clark, and S. Landau, "Lawful hacking: Using existing vulnerabilities for wiretapping on the internet," Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 1–43, 2014.
E. Ferdig, K. R. Pytash, R. M. Merchant, and E. N. Nigh, "Digital Literacy and Digital Literacies: Policy, Pedagogy, and Research Considerations for Education," Educational Technology, vol. 56, no. 4, pp. 12–18, 2016.
Zohar, "Bitcoin: Under the Hood," Communications of the ACM, vol. 58, no. 9, pp. 104–113, 2015.
Dingledine, N. Mathewson, and P. Syverson, "Tor: The second-generation onion router," in Proceedings of the 13th Conference on USENIX Security Symposium, vol. 13, San Diego, CA, USA, August 2004, pp. 303–320.
J. Solove and P. M. Schwartz, Information Privacy Law, 7th ed., New York: Wolters Kluwer, 2021.
C. Banks, "Regulating government surveillance: The U.S. Freedom Act and the USA Liberty Act," International Journal of Constitutional Law, vol. 16, no. 4, pp. 1048–1066, 2018.
Greenleaf, "Global data privacy laws 2019: 132 national laws and many bills," Privacy Laws & Business International Report, issue 157, pp. 14–18, 2019.
E. Price, "Rethinking Asymmetrical Information Warfare: An Opportunity for Norm Entrepreneurship," Harvard National Security Journal, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 50–79, 2017.
J. Shackelford, "Toward cyber peace: Managing cyber attacks through polycentric governance," American University Law Review, vol. 62, no. 5, pp. 1273–1344, 2013.
B. Marczak, J. Scott-Railton, S. McKune, B. Abdul Razzak, and R. Deibert, "Hide and seek: Tracking NSO group’s Pegasus spyware to operations in 45 countries," Sep. 18, 2018.
J. E. Bromwich, "Digital privacy and the impact of advanced surveillance technologies: a study of the Pegasus spyware," Computers & Security, vol. 104, p. 102155, 2021.
G. Cecere, N. Corrocher, and R. D. Battaglia, "Innovation and competition in the smartphone industry: Is there a dominant design?," Telecommunications Policy, vol. 39, no. 3–4, pp. 162-175, 2015.
T. Dinev and P. Hart, "An extended privacy calculus model for e-commerce transactions," Information Systems Research, vol. 17, no. 1, pp. 61–80, 2006.
R. Gallagher and N. Mielczarek, "The rise of commercial spyware: evaluating the threat to global privacy and security," Journal of Information Warfare, vol. 20, no. 1, pp. 97–111, 2021.
R. Deibert, Reset: Reclaiming the Internet for Civil Society, House of Anansi Press, 2020.
M. Gupta and R. Shukla, "A comprehensive review of state-sponsored cyber espionage," Computers & Security, vol. 97, p. 101948, 2020.
Human Rights Watch, "United Arab Emirates: Prominent Rights Defender Arbitrarily Detained," 2018.
B. Marczak, J. Scott-Railton, R. Marquis, and C. Guarnieri, "NSO Group’s iPhone Zero-Day used against a UAE Human Rights Defender," Citizen Lab Research Brief, University of Toronto, 2016.
J. Scott-Railton and R. Deibert, "Privacy under attack: The Pegasus spyware and the unsecured future of mobile communications," IEEE Security & Privacy, vol. 15, no. 2, pp. 24-31, 2017.
I. Mohamed and D. Patel, "Android vs iOS security: A comparative study," in 2015 12th International Conference on Information Technology-New Generations, Apr. 13, 2015, pp. 725-730. IEEE.
M. Agrawal, G. Varshney, K.P.S. Saumya, and M. Verma, "Pegasus: Zero-Click spyware attack–its countermeasures and challenges," 2022.
B. Marczak, J. Scott-Railton, S. McKune, B. Abdul Razzak, and R. Deibert, "Hide and seek: Tracking NSO group’s Pegasus spyware to operations in 45 countries," 2018.
M. Agrawal, G. Varshney, K.P.S. Saumya, and M. Verma, "Pegasus: Zero-Click spyware attack–its countermeasures and challenges," 2022.
R. Deibert, "Digital threats against journalists," in Journalism After Snowden: The Future of the Free Press in the Surveillance State, Columbia University Press, 2017, pp. 240-257.
M. R. Patil and C. F. Mulimani, "Pegasus: Transforming Phone Into A Spy," Think India Journal, vol. 22, no. 14, pp. 7883-7890, 2019.
J. Smith, "Technical Insights into Pegasus Spyware: An In-depth Analysis," 2023.
E. Johnson, "Legal and Ethical Ramifications of Pegasus Spyware Deployment," 2022.
S. Roberts, "Pegasus Spyware and its Impact on Journalism: A Critical Analysis," 2024.
M. Brown, "Corporate Espionage in the Digital Age: Mitigating Risks Posed by Pegasus Spyware," 2023.
D. Miller, "Psychosocial Implications of Pegasus Spyware Targeting: A Qualitative Study," 2022.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
All papers should be submitted electronically. All submitted manuscripts must be original work that is not under submission at another journal or under consideration for publication in another form, such as a monograph or chapter of a book. Authors of submitted papers are obligated not to submit their paper for publication elsewhere until an editorial decision is rendered on their submission. Further, authors of accepted papers are prohibited from publishing the results in other publications that appear before the paper is published in the Journal unless they receive approval for doing so from the Editor-In-Chief.
IJISAE open access articles are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. This license lets the audience to give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made and if they remix, transform, or build upon the material, they must distribute contributions under the same license as the original.
