Rebooting your phone daily is your best defense against zero-click attacks - here's why

Over the past decade, spyware tools have repeatedly been found on the phones of journalists, activists, and politicians. This has raised concerns about the unprecedented proliferation of spyware technology and the lack of protections in the tech sector. Also: Got a suspicious E-ZPass text? Don't click the link (and what to do if you already did) Meta's WhatsApp recently revealed it discovered a hacking campaign targeting about 90 users -- mostly journalists and civil-society members in two dozen countries. According to a WhatsApp spokesperson, the Israeli spyware company Paragon Solutions -- now owned by Florida-based private equity firm AE Industrial Partners -- was behind the attack. Graphite, Paragon's spyware, infiltrated WhatsApp groups by sending users a malicious PDF attachment. Without their knowledge, it can access and read messages on encrypted apps like WhatsApp and Signal. A zero-click attack, like the one on WhatsApp, requires no user action for a device to be compromised. Unlike phishing or one-click attacks -- which depend on clicking a malicious link or opening an attachment -- zero-click exploits a security vulnerability to quietly gain complete access once the device is infected. In an interview with ZDNET, Rocky Cole, co-founder of mobile threat protection company iVerify, said, "in the case of graphite, via WhatsApp, some kind of payload, like a PDF or an image, [was sent to the victims' devices] and the underlying processes that receive and handle those p...