Amman — A spyware program called “Predator” was discovered on the mobile of an opposition Arab journalist residing in Turkey more sophisticated than Pegasus. According to the source, even the iPhone can be hacked and all the data stolen. Apple refused to comment. The source added that if the mobile phone gets strangely overheated, it may be hacked.
Facebook’s owner Meta announced Thursday that it has removed more than 1,500 Facebook and Instagram accounts involved in reconnaissance, social engineering and sending malicious links to victims in over 100 countries. Meta added it notified around 50,000 users it believes were targeted by seven groups.
Predator shares a similar features to Pegasus. Citizen Lab, the discoverers of the new spyware, expressed that the journalist was sent a malicious link over WhatsApp. When opened, the spyware can access a phone’s cameras and microphone and can exfiltrate the phone’s data. Predator, unlike Pegasus, lacks the ability to silently infect a phone without any user interaction, but it makes up for that with persistence. Citizen Lab added the spyware can survive a reboot of an iPhone, which typically clears any spyware hiding in its memory, by creating an automation using the “Shortcuts” feature built into iOS.
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