advertising intelligence
Politicians in Europe and the U.S. are speaking out against the use of advertising technology to infect targets with zero-click 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.
This is an executive summary for our report “Exposing AdFection: How Discover-Tech Turned Targeted Ads Into a Pipeline for Zero-Click Mercenary Spyware.”
Senior research fellow Gary Miller spoke to Financial Times about attempts to exploit mobile network vulnerabilities to track US personnel during the Iran war.
Senior researcher Luis Fernando García participated in a Conversatorio Regional hosted by CELS, ODIA, Democracia en Red, and Vía Libre.
Citizen Lab director Ron Deibert recently spoke on All Things Considered about the Lab’s new investigation of Webloc, a geolocation surveillance system.
Location data collected from mobile apps and digital advertising can reveal habits, interests and almost any other aspect of someone’s life. In this report, we uncover how a geolocation surveillance system called Webloc uses ad-based data to monitor hundreds of millions of people across the globe.
Citizen Lab research fellow Wolfie Christl spoke with Der Standard about the Austrian Interior Ministry’s €900K investment in surveillance software Tangles.