Half the World's Nations Now Have Spyware Like Pegasus
GCHQ estimates roughly 100 countries have acquired cyber intrusion tools, signaling a dramatic drop in access barriers.
The spyware genie is well and truly out of the bottle. Britain's intelligence agency GCHQ estimates that around 100 countries have now gotten their hands on cyber intrusion software capable of hacking targets — tools in the same category as the infamous Pegasus spyware.
That means more than half the world's nation states are believed to possess offensive hacking capabilities. The assessment, reported from Glasgow, paints a stark picture: the barrier to acquiring sophisticated surveillance technology is plummeting.
This isn't a handful of well-funded superpowers anymore. The proliferation of commercial spyware has democratized digital espionage in ways that would have been unthinkable a decade ago. When anyone with a government budget can buy turnkey hacking tools, the traditional power dynamics of cyber operations get thrown out the window.
The commercial spyware market shows no signs of shrinking.