iPhone users infected by Powerful Pegasus Spyware, How to Check your iOS Device

If you are an Apple iPhone user, then this is something you should be aware of. Your iPhone could be infected by one of the most powerful spyware on any Smartphone today. It is called Pegasus. Yes, it is a known fact that iPhones are rarely exposed to any such spyware compared to other Android Smartphones. Recently, we saw a bunch of spyware affecting Android devices. But this one has hit the iPhones, and it certainly did hit very hard. On August 25th, Apple advised all the iPhone users to install a security update in order to stay away from the Pegasus.

The Pegasus is dubbed as one of the most sophisticated spyware ever created to spy on smartphones. The software was created by the Israeli company NSO. It was created in an attempt to spy on iPhones, Android and Blackberry smartphone users. So now you may ask, how is this different from any other mobile spyware? So first of all, users cannot see this software on their smartphone, even after its contamination. Also, any and all kinds of data encryption software can protect from this. And besides all this, there are three security flaws that even Apple didn’t know about.

This spyware installs itself on the kernel of the smartphone, which is the heart of the operating system. So it can incept any data even before the encryption can happen. So if you are wondering if it can read your WhatApp or any other text messages, then yes, it can. So in a way it can be used as an effective tool for monitoring any kind of ill activities like terrorism as well. But it is not a good idea to let this go in wild so that anyone can use it.

And now comes the worst part. Although, Apple has issued a security update for the same, but it can only prevent your smartphone from getting contaminated. So this essentially means that if your device is already contaminated, then it is going to stay there. So what now? Well, the best you can do is wait for some kind of an update from Apple that can remove the spyware. Meanwhile, you can check if your device is affected by it.

Here’s how to do it –

• The first thing which you need to do here is, install the free-of-charge Lookout app onto the iOS device.
• Once done, setup your account and get right into the app.
• For non-jailbroken devices, if the security option says secure, then everything is good. But if it says ‘Warning’ or ‘Caution’, then tap on security to see what is causing it. From there, tap on System advisor to see if it compromised and stated the reason as Pegasus.
• If your device is jailbroken, then it will obviously say ‘Warning’ or ‘Caution’. Then from here again tap on the Security advisor and see if the message reads the reason as jailbreak or Pegasus.

Let us know if you checked your device. If yes, then let us know if it is infected or not. Stay tuned for more updates as we will inform if there is any fix for this issue.

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