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NSO Group is an Israel-based commercial surveillance vendor that develops Pegasus spyware and supporting exploitation infrastructure for targeted cyberespionage. Also known as NSO Group Technologies and tracked by iVerify as Rainbow Ronin, it supplies surveillance capabilities to government intelligence and law-enforcement customers. It is a private-sector offensive actor rather than a government intelligence unit. Circles is a closely affiliated surveillance company. Pegasus targets Apple iOS and Android devices. Documented deployments have targeted journalists, activists, human rights defenders, lawyers, and political opponents, including civil society targets in Mexico, Bahrain, and India. NSO Group develops the surveillance technology, while customer-operated deployments must be distinguished from the vendor itself. Its exploitation capabilities include zero-day vulnerabilities, remote code execution, sandbox escapes, privilege escalation, and zero-click delivery through automatically processed messaging content. Associated exploit chains include FORCEDENTRY, BLASTPASS, LATENTIMAGE, FINDMYPWN, and PWNYOURHOME. FORCEDENTRY combined an ImageIO JBIG2 decoding vulnerability with an object-deserialization-based sandbox escape and bypassed Apple's BlastDoor protections. BLASTPASS exploited CVE-2023-41061 and CVE-2023-41064 through malicious iMessage content. Other chains have used Find My and HomeKit alongside iMessage. Pegasus provides extensive endpoint surveillance, including extraction of messages, emails, contacts, call records, browser data, credentials, and application databases, together with screenshot capture and camera access. The related Android spyware Chrysaor additionally supports keylogging and covert microphone surveillance. Analyzed Android variants use root exploits, disable security or update mechanisms, and can persist across factory resets. Anti-forensic features include deletion of delivery artifacts and browser-history entries, removal of logging evidence, and operator-commanded or automatically triggered self-removal.
Who, where, and from where this actor operates. Pulled from open-source reporting and Mallory's analyst review.
Sectors the actor has been observed targeting.
Geographies tied to known operations.
Attributed origin per open-source reporting.
38 distinct techniques observed across reporting, grouped by tactic. Hover any cell for the evidence excerpt.
9 malware families attributed to this actor across reporting.
4 additional families tracked in Mallory.
9 CVEs this actor has used in observed campaigns. 9 of them exploited in the wild.
3 more CVEs tied to this actor tracked in Mallory.
322 indicators attributed to this actor. Values are masked here and available in full in Mallory.
20 sources tracked across advisories, community write-ups, and news. New activity surfaces here as Mallory finds it.