Confirming Large-Scale Pegasus Surveillance of Jordan-based Civil Society
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.
Posts tagged “Surveillance”
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.
Siena Anstis, Senior legal advisor at The Citizen Lab in a recent publication in the prestigious peer review journal International and Comparative Law highlights the urgent need for an international treaty to tackle digital transnational repression.
This report provides a comprehensive guide to geolocation-related threats sourced from 3G, 4G, and 5G network operators. Case studies, references, examples, and evidence are provided to give a complete and contextual understanding of mobile network-based location tracking in order to formulate policies and actions that protect civil society from current and future geolocation surveillance.
In this report, we analyze the Windows, Android, and iOS versions of Tencent’s Sogou Input Method, the most popular Chinese-language input method in China. Our analysis found serious vulnerabilities in the app’s custom encryption system and how it encrypts sensitive data. These vulnerabilities could allow a network eavesdropper to decrypt sensitive communications sent by the app, including revealing all keystrokes being typed by the user. Following our disclosure of these vulnerabilities, Sogou released updated versions of the app that identified all of the issues we disclosed.
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.
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.
Citizen Lab examined a set of documents leaked to news outlet The Intercept that describe plans to develop and launch an Iranian mobile network, including subscriber management operations and services, and integration with a legal intercept solution. If implemented fully as envisioned, it would enable state authorities to directly monitor, intercept, redirect, degrade or deny all Iranians’ mobile communications, including those who are presently challenging the regime.
The Citizen Lab, in collaboration with Catalan civil society groups, has identified at least 65 individuals targeted or infected with mercenary spyware, including members of the European Parliament, Catalan Presidents, legislators, jurists, and members of civil society organisations.
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.
WeChat communications conducted entirely among non-China-registered accounts are subject to pervasive content surveillance that was previously thought to be exclusively reserved for China-registered accounts.