How Spyware Mercenaries Hack Your Phone
What Next | Daily News and Analysis
Slate Podcasts
4.3 • 2.4K Ratings
🗓️ 23 July 2021
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week, Amnesty International and a French journalism nonprofit named Forbidden Stories revealed that technology from a spyware firm called NSO Group is being deployed on a massive scale. The spyware, called Pegasus, gives the user access to every part of a victim’s smartphone -- notes, messages, photos, and recordings.
What’s it like for security researchers to see their worst fears about digital spying play out? And what are they worried about next?
Guests:
John Scott Railton, Senior Researcher at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto
Siddharth Varadarajan, Founding Editor of the Wire
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:43.3 | A couple of years ago, journalist Siddharth Varadharajan had a meeting with a source. |
| 0:48.6 | Sadarth is the co-founder of the Indian news site, The Wire, and he was getting ready to talk with a minister from India's Modi government. |
| 0:56.4 | And the guy he was meeting started acting a little nervous about their phones. |
| 1:01.7 | This minister basically, he said, take on your phone. |
| 1:04.7 | So Siddharth took his phone out and switched it off. |
| 1:07.2 | And then to assure me, he took out his phone and switched his phone too. And then he said, |
| 1:12.6 | follow me into another room. And then the phones were put in this room. His music system was |
| 1:18.1 | turned on loud. And we exited the room with the phones, with the switched off phones in that room |
| 1:23.0 | and then sat somewhere else to have our conversation. |
| 1:25.9 | Siddharth thought to himself, this is maybe going a little far. |
| 1:29.0 | Would anyone really be eavesdropping on us through our phones? |
| 1:32.7 | And the answer that we've all learned this week is yes. |
| 1:37.8 | A group of media organizations has uncovered evidence of a massive spying effort |
| 1:42.6 | targeting journalists, activists, and business |
| 1:45.3 | leaders. |
| 1:46.2 | Siddharth is one of several people whose phones were compromised with spyware from the Israeli |
... |
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