Between November 2018 and May 2019, we observed intrusion attempts against individuals from the Private Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the Central Tibetan Administration, the Tibetan Parliament, and Tibetan human rights groups.

The Predator in your Pocket and Installing Fear investigate the stalkerware industry through two distinct lenses: the former provides an interdisciplinary scan of the stalkerware market and includes technical, marketing, and privacy policy analyses, while the latter provides a study of how stalkerware fits into the Canadian legal landscape.

Dubbed Endless Mayfly, the operators spoofed legitimate news outlets and disseminated fake stories through social media accounts. Once the articles had gained traction, they were deleted and the links were redirected to the domain being impersonated. This “ephemeral disinformation” technique provided the veneer of legitimacy while obscuring the origins of the fake narratives.

A recently discovered security vulnerability on WhatsApp, currently used by over 1.5 billion people worldwide, has been found to have been exploited by NSO Group developed spyware.

Spyware developer NSO Group is usually quick to dismiss the evidence that its customers have abused its Pegasus mobile phone spyware. This pattern of denials was repeated in a recent 60 Minutes investigation, which gives a rare look into NSO Group’s management.

A recent New York Times article investigates how authoritarian states target citizens and dissidents with sophisticated spyware, developed within a secretive, multi-billion dollar industry.

The window of a murdered Mexican journalist was targeted with Pegasus, a spyware product which can secretly access the contents of a phone and turn on its camera and microphone.

Citizen Lab research associate Christopher Parsons, in conversation with CBC Radio Spark, comments on the security concerns associated with Huawei technology should it be used in Canada’s 5G infrastructure.

Over the last month, two Citizen Lab staff members were contacted by two separate individuals in what appears to be an attempt to compromise our work. Each of the contacts purported to show an interest in the staff members’ personal, non-Citizen Lab related interests, and presented themselves as serious and professional.

Citizen Lab senior research fellow Bill Marczak and Saudi dissident Omar Abdulaziz joined CNN to discuss how NSO’s Pegasus spyware found on Omar’s phone is linked to Jamal Khashoggi.