Experts: Azerbaijan uses Pegasus as cyber weapon against Armenia - with Israel's permission

On October 30, many iPhone users in Armenia received notifications from Apple that their phones had been attacked by some spyware. According to cybersecurity experts Samvel Martirosyan and Artur Papyan, such alerts can indicate a variety of attacks, however, in the case of Armenia, it is usually infection with the Pegasus spyware.

As Samvel Martirosyan said at a press conference, Pegasus is a spy program developed by a private Israeli company NSO Group and which is sold to governments of different countries - with “good intentions” - supposedly to spy on criminals. However, in reality, various dictatorial regimes use this program against civil society, and not at all in the fight against crime.

According to the specialist, one of the most famous and active users of this spy program is Azerbaijan. Within its own country alone, Azerbaijan has about 1,000 targets that are being monitored through this program. These, of course, are not criminals, but opposition politicians, journalists and others.

It is interesting, however, that Azerbaijan is also using Pegasus against Armenia, and this is reported not only by local specialists, but also by large international research teams.

“Azerbaijan uses Pegasus as a cyber weapon against Armenia - with the permission of the Israeli government, since this is considered a military export, and therefore Pegasus is not sold to other countries without the permission of the government,” noted Samvel Martirosyan.

Who might be targeted by Pegasus?

According to experts, this spyware usually infects the phones of the people who may have some important or valuable information, as well as their relatives and even children. Thus, there are known cases of infection in Armenia and Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) of the phones of people who held important positions in the National Security Service, military personnel, oppositionists, journalists, employees of law enforcement agencies, various institutions, embassies, and so on.

Many cases of infection occurred during Azerbaijan's attack on Artsakh in 2020, as well as during subsequent escalations. It should also be noted that the fact that the phone has been infected often becomes known very late. Thus, there have been many cases when people turned to cybersecurity specialists and showed them a recent notification from Apple, but it turned out that their phone was infected – or an attempt was to infect (in about 30% of cases the infection was unsuccessful) during the war of 2020 .

Samvel Martirosyan believes that at least 1,000 people were infected or tried to infect with Pegasus in Armenia, as a result of which a lot of secret information was obtained.

“This is a very dangerous attack, and we cannot yet even imagine the full picture of the results of such attacks,” the specialist noted.

What information can be stolen using Pegasus?

With the help of Pegasus, you can “steal” almost any information, since the “customer” gets full access to the victim’s phone. They can listen to the victim’s telephone conversations, view files, photos, chats, and wiretap conversations through the phone’s microphone if the victim keeps the phone with him.

“When we tell people about what can be done through spyware, their eyes often widen - they immediately remember how much information they have on their phone,” Martirosyan noted.

As Arthur Papyan noted in his turn, many people, having learned that their phone was infected, are worried about their bank cards, information about which is also stored on the phone. But often during a conversation it turns out that there is, for example, about 500,000 drams on the bank card. But it’s worth considering that one Pegasus infection (and in the case of important targets, they can infect repeatedly) costs from $20,000 to $65,000: if someone spent that much money to infect your phone, it’s unlikely that their goal is your 500 000 drams – he is probably interested in information that costs much more.

How can you know if your phone is infected with Pegasus?

The answer is simple: in no way. A phone infected with Pegasus does not overheat, does not freeze, and does not experience any other “symptoms” of infection. Moreover, infection with this spyware program occurs, so to speak, through zero clicks: that is, the victim does not need to click on virus links or do anything at all for the program to sneak into the phone.

At the same time, it is worth noting that Pegasus can infect not only an iPhone, but also any Android phone. The difference is that Apple collects and stores certain diagnostic information about its phones because it makes them itself. Google, on the other hand, distributes its Android OS as open source and doesn't have much control over the phones other manufacturers make with it.

“If you haven't received an alert, it doesn't mean your phone isn't infected. It may be infected, important information may have been stolen from you, but you may not know about it,” noted Arthur Papyan.