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Israeli-made spyware Pegasus used in Indonesia since 2018, says IndonesiaLeaks
An investigation from whistleblower platform IndonesiaLeaks published on Monday uncovered possible evidence that Pegasus, a spyware from Israeli cyber intelligence firm NSO Group, had been in use in Indonesian soil since 2018, with the police and the intelligence agency allegedly being some of its users.
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Illustration of a hacker. (Unsplash/Mika Baumeister)
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o:p>An investigation from whistleblower platform IndonesiaLeaks published on Monday uncovered possible evidence that Pegasus, a spyware from Israeli cyber-intelligence firm NSO Group, had been in use on Indonesian soil since 2018, with the police and the intelligence agency allegedly being some of its users.
“The IndonesiaLeaks consortium found indications of the NSO Group spyware [entering Indonesia] through the shipping manifest of PT Mandala Wangi Kreasindo," the report published in Tempo weekly magazine said. Tempo is among the members of the consortium, along with a number of other Indonesian media outlets and civil society organizations.
In the manifest, the company is recorded as bringing in two pieces of network equipment from United States technology companies Cisco and Dell with a total listed value of around US$16,000.
However, Q Cyber Technologies, parent company of the NSO Group, is listed as the sender. Despite Q Cyber Technologies being headquartered in Luxembourg, the IndonesiaLeaks investigation found that the equipment was originally flown in from Japan with a transit in London.
While a source inside the Customs and Excise Directorate General confirmed that it had found no irregularities within the shipment, IndonesiaLeaks spoke with a spyware middleman who confirmed that customized Dell-branded equipment was often used to disguise spyware and obfuscate the actual value of the items.
One of the most sophisticated tools of its kind, the current version of Pegasus falls under what the industry describes as zero-click spyware. Zero-click spyware is named so because it requires no interaction from the victims to operate, unlike the more widespread one-click spyware that still hinges on the target clicking on a compromised link for the malicious software to work.
Taking advantage of security vulnerabilities and loopholes on devices, zero-click attacks can be sent through a call to hack a target’s device without the target having to answer the call. These tools are also capable of leaving no trace behind, leaving the target unaware that they’ve been targeted at all.
