As part of a collaborative investigation led by Access Now, Citizen Lab researchers conducted forensic analysis of iPhones belonging to members of Jordan-based civil society.

Phones belonging to four Jordanian human rights defenders, lawyers, and journalists were hacked with NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware between August 2019 and December 2021. We assess that at least two of the four targets were hacked by Pegasus operators primarily focused on Jordan, based on SMS messages containing Pegasus links that map to a cluster of domain names focusing on Jordanian themes.

Cyber Stewards Network partner 7iber marked it’s founding anniversary on Jordan’s independence day by highlighting the poor state of press freedom and women’s rights in the country.

The Jordanian Media Commission has blocked access to 7iber.org from within the country. It was removed via the Press and Publication Law, which requires all media commentary on the “Kingdom’s internal or external affairs” to be approved by licensing from the Jordanian Media Commission.

Cyber Stewards Walid Al-Saqaf, Hisham Al-Miraat, Ramsey George, and Reem Al-Masri, along with Citizen Lab affiliated Morgan Marquis-Boire and Lidija Sabados, participated in the 4th Arab Bloggers Meeting.

In June 2013, Jordan’s Press and Publications Department initiated a ban on all Jordanian news websites that have not registered and been licensed by the government agency. 7iber was among the more than 300 news websites blocked as a result of this initiative. Since its website was blocked, 7iber has been working with lawyers and other media groups to challenge the law and has used the opportunity to raise awareness about Internet filtering and freedom of expression.

This edition of the Middle East and North Africa CyberWatch discusses censorship and filtering, surveillance, blogger and netizen arrests and more.

This edition of the Middle East and North Africa CyberWatch covers topics such as censorship and surveillance, blogger and netizen arrests, cyber attacks and technological developments from the region.

This edition of the Middle East and North Africa CyberWatch covers topics such as censorship and surveillance, blogger and netizen arrests, cyber attacks and technological developments from the region.