This report describes an extensive malware, phishing, and disinformation campaign active in several Latin American countries, including Ecuador, Argentina, Venezuela, and Brazil. The nature and geographic spread of the targets seems to point to a sponsor, or sponsors, with regional, political interests. The attackers, whom we have named Packrat, have shown a keen and systematic interest in the political opposition and the independent press in so-called ALBA countries (Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas), and their recently allied regimes.

This report provides a detailed analysis of two products sold for facilitating targeted surveillance known as network injection appliances. These products allow for the easy deployment of targeted surveillance implants and are being sold by commercial vendors to countries around the world. Compromising a target becomes as simple as waiting for the user to view unencrypted content on the Internet.

We analyze a newly discovered Android implant that we attribute to Hacking Team and highlight the political subtext of the bait content and attack context. In addition, we expose the functionality and architecture of Hacking Team’s Remote Control system and operator tradecraft in never-before published detail.

In 2012, together with Eva Galperin from the EFF, Citizen Lab researchers Morgan Marquis-Boire and Seth Hardy identified the use of BlackShades in the targeting of opposition forces in Syria. This work has been featured in the recent coverage of the world wide “BlackShades busts” by the Washington Post, the Daily Beast, The Telegraph, and ThreatPost.

This report outlines an extensive US nexus for a network of servers forming part of the collection infrastructure of Hacking Team’s Remote Control System. The network, which includes data centers across the US, is used to obscure government clients of Hacking Team. It is used by at least 10 countries ranging from Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan to Korea, Poland and Ethiopia. In addition we highlight an intriguing US-only Hacking Team circuit.

This post is the second in a series of posts that focus on the global proliferation and use of Hacking Team’s RCS spyware, which is sold exclusively to governments.

In this report, we identified three instances where Ethiopian journalist group ESAT was targeted with spyware in the space of two hours by a single attacker. In each case the spyware appeared to be RCS (Remote Control System), programmed and sold exclusively to governments by Milan-based Hacking Team.

In this report, Citizen Lab researchers Morgan Marquis-Boire and John Scott-Railton and EFF Global Policy Analyst Eva Galperin outline how pro-government attackers have targeted the Syrian opposition, as well as NGO workers and journalists, with social engineering and “Remote Access Tools” (RAT)

The Citizen Lab is pleased to announce the release of Some Devices Wander by Mistake: Planet Blue Coat Redux. In this report, we use a combination of network measurement and scanning methods and tools to identify instances of Blue Coat ProxySG and PacketShaper devices. This equipment can be used to secure and maintain networks, but can also be used to implement politically-motivated restrictions on access to information, and monitor and record private communications. We found Blue Coat devices on public networks of 83 countries. Included in these countries are regimes with questionable human rights records, and three countries that are subject to US sanctions: Iran, Syria, and Sudan.

The Citizen Lab is pleased to announce the publication of A Call to Harm: New Malware Attacks Against the Syrian Opposition. This research report by Morgan Marquis-Boire and John Scott-Railton examines two recent cyber attacks targeting the Syrian opposition: malware masquerading as the circumvention tool Freegate and a campaign masquerading as a call to arms by a pro-opposition cleric.