Yep, me & my colleague cowrote that paper 😉

You're right, the tech has gotten smarter. The 2016 cases for example were 1-click attacks. More recently we've seen most of the players doing 0-click attacks. Which makes sense if you've got the resources for it.

And Paragon, for example, is a more sophisticated animal. Despite this, we continue actively tracking mercenary spyware including Pegasus. And Paragon's Graphite and some others..