Posts tagged “spyware”
In a Q&A for the Digital Front Lines report by Foreign Policy Analytics, The Citizen Lab director Ron Deibert and human rights activist Carine Kanimba talk about the psychological impact of being targeted by mercenary spyware and the growing threat of surveillance technologies being misused by both state and non-state actors. They discuss how spyware… Read more »
In this episode of Zoom In Zoom Out on TaiwanPlus, Rebekah Brown, senior researcher at The Citizen Lab, speaks with reporter Herel Hughes to unpack the alarming rise of commercial spyware and its misuse across the globe.
Our analysis of spyware covertly implanted on a phone returned to a Russian programmer after he was released from custody, finds that the spyware placed on his device allows the operator to track a target device’s location, record phone calls, keystrokes, and read messages from encrypted messaging apps, among other capabilities.
In a joint investigation with Access Now, we found that seven Russian and Belarusian-speaking independent journalists and opposition activists based in Europe were targeted and/or infected with NSO Group’s Pegasus mercenary spyware.
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.
Amnesty International’s Security Lab has just published Caught in the Net as part of the European Investigative Collaborations‘ Predator Files, which details a threat actor sending what they assess to be Predator infection links on social media in replies to Twitter / X posts by officials, journalists and other members of civil society. The Citizen… Read more »
Between May and September 2023, former Egyptian MP Ahmed Eltantawy was targeted with Cytrox’s Predator spyware via links sent on SMS and WhatsApp after Eltantawy publicly stated his plans to run for President in the 2024 Egyptian elections. As Egypt is a known customer of Cytrox’s Predator spyware, and the spyware was delivered via network injection from a device located physically inside Egypt, we attribute the attack to the Egyptian government with high confidence.
In an investigative collaboration with Access Now, the Citizen Lab has analyzed forensic artifacts from the iPhone of award-winning exiled Russian investigative journalist Galina Timchenko and found with high confidence that on or around February 10th, 2023 it was infected with NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware.
Citizen Lab found an actively exploited zero-click vulnerability being used to deliver NSO Group’s Pegasus mercenary spyware while checking the device of an individual employed by a Washington DC-based civil society organization with international offices. We refer to the exploit chain as BLASTPASS. The exploit chain was capable of compromising iPhones running the latest version of iOS (16.6) without any interaction from the victim.
We identified widespread Pegasus spyware infections within Armenian civil society. We also identified two suspected Pegasus operators in Azerbaijan, whom we call BOZBASH and YANAR.
