After reading up on the Pegasus spyware the last couple weeks (how am I just finding out about it???) I’ve come to the conclusion that I won’t be able to protect my privacy in the near future.

I know that it is used to target political rivals, journalists, and human rights advocates in countries that aren’t the U.S. and let’s face it, I’m a nobody. But, who’s to say in the near future we don’t have another group like the shadow brokers come out and release tools developed by the NSO group. Sure, it’ll make it easier for Apple to patch what vulnerabilities Pegasus and Trident use, but a lot more people will incorporate it into their own tools. Exaclty like how EternalBlue was used in NotPetya.

It’s almost cheating that an exploit like this exists. No matter how good your OpSec is, it could be crushed by a tool that doesn’t need you to click on anything and works on the latest version of IOS and Android.

The only way I see being able to fight against something like this is to use GrapheneOS and a burner number that is not publically known. Actually, not using a phone is probably the only way to beat it. (Just started reading Extreme Privacy by Michael Bazzell so I’ll update this soon.)