Security researchers say Jordanian journalist and human rights defender's iPhone hacked with spyware Pegasus just weeks after Apple sued spyware maker NSO Group to stop it from targeting its customers.
The phone of award-winning journalist Suhair Jaradat was broken with Pegasus spyware on December 5, 2021, according to an analysis of her phone by Front Line Defenders and Citizen as posted by TechCrunch.
Jaradat received one message on WhatsApp by someone purporting to be an anti-government critic The message contained links to the Pegasus malware. According to the analysis, Jaradat's iPhone was continuously hacked until February 2021.
Apple had filed a lawsuit against the Israeli manufacturer NSO Group spy software in November 2021, seeking a court order banning NSO from using its services and products to develop hacks against its customers.
The order, if issued, would make it very difficult for NSO to continue developing Pegasus software, as most of its capabilities are based on abusing Apple services such as iMessage, and creating Apple user accounts to deliver malware.
However, so far the case is proceeding very slowly, after the first judge of the case resigned.
The Pegasus spyware developed by NSO gives the company's government customers almost complete access to a target's device, in privacy, photos, messages and their exact location.
Many victims have received text messages with malicious links, but Pegasus software recently began hacking the iPhone without the need for any user interaction, using so-called "zero-click" attacks.
Apple last year strengthened it better safety of iPhone with BlastDoor, a new invisible security feature designed to filter out malicious payloads sent via iMessage. However, NSO has already bypassed the new security measure with an exploit, which the researchers called ForcedEntry for its ability to break BlastDoor's protections. Apple patched BlastDoor in September after the NSO exploit was found to affect devices with iPads, Macs, Apple Watch, and not just the iPhone.
