Mexico
In 2022, the Citizen Lab gained extensive forensic visibility into new NSO Group exploit activity after finding infections among members of Mexico’s civil society, including two human rights defenders from Centro PRODH, which represents victims of military abuses in Mexico.
At least five civil society victims of QuaDream’s spyware and exploits were identified in North America, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. Victims include journalists, political opposition figures, and an NGO worker. We identify traces of a suspected iOS 14 zero-click exploit used to deploy QuaDream’s spyware.
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.
The Citizen Lab is at the forefront of investigating and reporting on abuses of mercenary spyware. Our submission highlights the capabilities of spyware and the nature of the spyware industry; how surveillance technology is used to violate fundamental human rights, and more particularly how it is related to enforced disappearances; and we provide recommendations for states, spyware companies, other businesses, civil society, and the Working Group.
Circles is a surveillance firm that reportedly exploits weaknesses in the global mobile phone system to snoop on calls, texts, and the location of phones around the globe, and is affiliated with NSO Group, which develops the oft-abused Pegasus spyware. Using Internet scanning, we found a unique signature associated with the hostnames of Check Point firewalls used in Circles deployments, enabling us to identify Circles deployments in at least 25 countries.
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.
This research brief details how Griselda Triana, journalist and the wife of slain journalist Javier Valdez Cárdenas, was targeted with NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware in the days after his killing.
This report details how colleagues of a slain Mexican journalist investigating cartels were targeted with NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware in the days after his killing.
In Mexico, government-exclusive spyware technology is being used to target journalists, human rights defenders, anti-corruption advocates, and international investigators. Luis Fernando Garcia, Director of R3D, explains how technology meant to track terrorists is being turned against activists
On August 30, 2017 Citizen Lab’s Reckless V report received front page coverage on the New York Times. This report revealed that Claudio X. González, Director of a prominent anti-corruption organization, was targeted with government-exclusive spyware produced by the NSO Group.
