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Pegasus: The Spyware That Hacked the World-Israel's Surveillance Empire
Paperback
General Political ScienceInternational Relations
Publisher: Ivo Vichev
Published: Jan 25 2026
Pages: 298
Weight: 0.76
Height: 0.67 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.50
Language: English
They promised to fight terrorism. Instead, they built the ultimate weapon against democracy.
In 2010, three Israeli intelligence veterans founded a startup that would hack the world. NSO Group's Pegasus spyware could silently infiltrate any smartphone on earth-reading encrypted messages, tracking locations, recording conversations-without the target ever knowing. Sold exclusively to governments for counterterrorism, it was supposed to protect societies from existential threats.
Instead, it became the weapon of choice for silencing journalists, crushing activists, and hunting dissidents.
This is the definitive account of surveillance capitalism's darkest chapter.
Drawing on the explosive Pegasus Project investigation, leaked NSO documents, and forensic evidence from compromised devices, this book exposes how a small Israeli company built a billion-dollar empire by selling surveillance to anyone willing to pay-from democratic allies to murderous autocrats.
Inside, you'll discover:
- The targeting of 50,000 phone numbers across 50 countries, including journalists at major international outlets and heads of state
- How Saudi intelligence surveilled Jamal Khashoggi's network before his brutal murder-using technology approved by Israeli officials
- Mexico's digital dirty war against reporters investigating corruption, including journalists later found murdered
- European democracies deploying Pegasus against their own citizens-opposition politicians in Poland, independence advocates in Spain, investigative journalists in Hungary
- The secret intelligence partnerships between Israel and Gulf monarchies that paved the way for the Abraham Accords
- WhatsApp and Apple's unprecedented legal war against NSO, revealing how surveillance companies systematically exploit the platforms billions depend on
From the Unit 8200 alumni network that spawned Israel's cyber empire to the forensic labs where researchers detected infections, from diplomatic crises to courtroom battles-this is the human story behind the headlines. The activists imprisoned after their phones were compromised. The lawyers whose confidential strategies were intercepted. The families surveilled for their relationships with dissidents.
The technology was supposed to protect democracy. Instead, it nearly destroyed it.
But this is also the story of an unprecedented fightback-civil society researchers exposing operations, tech giants fighting surveillance vendors, governments finally imposing sanctions, and the legal reckoning that brought NSO to its knees.
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