Pegasus (NSO Group) and Predator (Intellexa) are mercenary, zero-click spyware platforms. They have been documented in use against journalists, human rights defenders, lawyers, and executives — targets selected not for what they clicked, but for who they are.
Infection can occur silently through iMessage, WhatsApp, or a single SMS, with no interaction required from the target. There is no suspicious link to avoid and no attachment to decline — the exploit chain runs before you ever see it.
Indicators of compromise are engineered to be difficult to detect. Confirming or ruling out an infection reliably requires forensic tooling, log preservation, and specialist expertise — not consumer antivirus.