Bill Marczak is a senior researcher at the Citizen Lab, a co-founder of Bahrain Watch, and a post-doctoral researcher at UC Berkeley, where he completed a PhD in Computer Science under the advisorship of Vern Paxson. His work focuses on novel technological threats to Internet freedom, including new censorship and surveillance tools. His expertise is in internet scanning and conducting digital investigations. His work has been featured in Vanity Fair, the New York Times, the Washington Post, on CNN, and on Larry King.
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Publications
Targeting Democracy
Pegasus and Mercenary Spyware Attacks on Serbian Pro-Democracy Figures
In collaboration with the SHARE Foundation, we found with high confidence that Professor Vladan Đokić, Rector of the University of Belgrade, and prominent supporter of the Serbian student movement, was hacked with NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware in 2026. Additionally, we note that Rade Bajić, who, as a prosecutor, investigated official corruption in a failed project in Belgrade, received an Apple Threat Notification. These notifications are high-confidence indicators of targeting with mercenary spyware such as Pegasus. Our investigations into these cases are ongoing.
Exposing AdFection Executive Summary
This is an executive summary for our report “Exposing AdFection: How Discover-Tech Turned Targeted Ads Into a Pipeline for Zero-Click Mercenary Spyware.”
Exposing AdFection
How Discover-Tech Turned Targeted Ads Into a Pipeline for Zero-Click Mercenary Spyware
This is the first-ever public confirmation of zero-click mercenary spyware delivered via targeted ads. We call the technique AdFection, and show how it was used to infect devices at Al Jazeera with Candiru’s spyware. We also uncover Discover-Tech, and show how the company helps mercenary surveillance vendors track and hack devices around the world.
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