John Scott-Railton

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John Scott-Railton is a Senior Researcher at The Citizen Lab. His work focuses on technological threats civil society, including targeted malware operations, cyber militias, and online disinformation. His greatest hits include a collaboration with colleague Bill Marczak that uncovered the the systematic use of Pegasus spyware to target civil society in several countries, including Mexico and the UAE. Pegasus is developed by the Israeli cyber-warfare company NSO Group and sold exclusively to governments. That investigation also uncovered the first iPhone zero-day and remote jailbreak seen in the wild. Other investigations with Citizen Lab colleagues include the first report of ISIS-led malware operations, China's "Great Cannon," the Government of China's nation-scale DDoS attack, and the 'tainted leaks' disinformation campaigns strongly linked to the Russian Government. These investigations, and others, have served as the basis for criminal investigations and lawsuits. John has also investigated the manipulation of news aggregators such as Google News, and privacy and security issues with fitness trackers. Recently, John was a fellow at Google Ideas and Jigsaw at Alphabet. John has undergraduate degrees from the University of Chicago and a Masters from the University of Michigan. He is completing a PhD at UCLA. Previously he founded The Voices Projects, collaborative information feeds that bypassed internet shutdowns in Libya and Egypt. John's work has been covered by Time Magazine, BBC, CNN, The Washington Post, and the New York Times. He can be reached at jsr [at] citizenlab.ca

Articles

New Pegasus Spyware Abuses Identified in Mexico

Mexican digital rights organization R3D, with technical support from the Citizen Lab, has determined that Mexican journalists and a human rights defender were infected with Pegasus between 2019 and 2021. The infections occurred years after the first revelations of Pegasus abuses in Mexico, and after Mexico’s current President assured the public that the government no longer used the spyware, and that there would be no further abuses.

اللؤلؤة 2 بيغاسوس: اختراق نشطاء بحرينيين ببيغاسوس، فقط بعد أيام من تقرير يؤكد اختراق ضحايا آخرين

يؤكد التحقيق الذي أجريناه أن الهواتف التي تخص ثلاثة أفراد في البحرين قد تم اختراقها في عام 2021 باستخدام برنامج التجسس Pegasus التابع لمجموعة NSO. وافق اثنان من الأفراد المستهدفين على ذكر أسمائهم.

Proyecto Torogoz: Hackeo extensivo de los medios de comunicación y la sociedad civil en El Salvador con el programa espía Pegasus

El Citizen Lab y Access Now han confirmado 35 casos de periodistas y miembros de la sociedad civil salvadoreña cuyos teléfonos fueron infectados con el programa espía Pegasus del NSO entre julio del 2020 y noviembre del 2021. Hemos compartido una muestra de nuestros datos forenses con el Laboratorio de Seguridad de Amnistía Internacional, el cual confirma de forma independiente los hallazgos.

بيغاسوس PEGASUS ضد بريداتور PREDATOR: الاستهداف المضاعف لجهاز الآيفون الخاص بمعارض يكشف عن برنامج التجسس المأجور من Cytrox

بواسطة: بيل مارزاك، جون سكوت-رايلتون، بحر عبد الرزاق، نورا الجيزاوي، سيينا أنستيس، كريستين بردان، ورون ديبرت. النتائج الرئيسية تم اختراق معارضَين مصريين في المنفى؛ وهما السياسي أيمن نور، ومقدم برنامج شهير (والذي يرغب بألا يفصح عن هويته). تم الاختراق بواسطة برنامج التجسس بريداتور (Predator)، والذي تم تطويره وبيعه بواسطة  Cytrox لتطوير برامج التجسس المرتزقة، وهي… Read more »

Pegasus vs. Predator: Dissident’s Doubly-Infected iPhone Reveals Cytrox Mercenary Spyware

Two Egyptians—exiled politician Ayman Nour and the host of a popular news program (who wishes to remain anonymous)—were hacked with Predator spyware, built and sold by the previously little-known mercenary spyware developer Cytrox. The phone of Ayman Nour was simultaneously infected with both Cytrox’s Predator and NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware, operated by two different government clients.