(credit: Employees of MGM)
Researchers have uncovered one of the most advanced espionage apps ever written for the Android mobile operating system. They found the app after it had infected a few dozen handsets.
Pegasus for Android is the companion app to Pegasus for iOS, a full-featured espionage platform that was discovered in August infecting the iPhone of a political dissident located in the United Arab Emirates. Researchers from Google and the mobile-security firm Lookout found the Android version in the months following, as they scoured the Internet. Google said an Android security feature known as verify apps indicated the newly discovered version of Pegasus had been installed on fewer than three-dozen devices.
“Pegasus for Android is an example of the common feature-set that we see from nation states and nation state-like groups,” Lookout researchers wrote in a technical analysis published Monday. “These groups produce advanced persistent threats (APT) for mobile with the specific goal of tracking a target not only in the physical world, but also the virtual world.”