Throughout late 2024 and early 2025, iVerify detected anomalous activity on iPhones belonging to individuals affiliated with political campaigns, media organizations, A.I. companies and governments operating in the United States and European Union.
Specifically, we detected exceedingly rare crashes typically associated with sophisticated zero-click attacks via iMessage – an exploitation technique previously unobserved in any systematic way in the United States. Subsequent forensic examination of several of these devices ultimately revealed a previously unknown vulnerability in the “imagent” process which, owing to its relative position in the operating system and functionality, would provide attackers a primitive for further exploitation. This vulnerability was patched by Apple in iOS 18.3. We’ve dubbed this vulnerability NICKNAME.
In the course of our investigation, we discovered evidence suggesting – but not definitively proving – this vulnerability was exploited in targeted attacks as recently as March of this year. Specifically, we learned that Apple sent Threat Notifications to at least one device belonging to a senior government official in the EU on which we saw the highly anomalous crashes. Likewise, one device demonstrated behavior frequently associated with successful exploitation, specifically the creation and deletion of iMessage attachments in bulk within a matter of seconds on several occasions after an anomalous crash. We only observed these crashes on devices belonging to extremely high value targets. And these crashes constituted only .0001% of the crash log telemetry taken from a sample of 50,000 iPhones.
Spyware maker NSO Group will have to pay more than $167 million in damages to WhatsApp for a 2019 hacking campaign against more than 1,400 users.
On Tuesday, after a five-year legal battle, a jury ruled that NSO Group must pay $167,254,000 in punitive damages and around $444,719 in compensatory damages.
This is a huge legal win for WhatsApp, which had asked for more than $400,000 in compensatory damages, based on the time its employees had to dedicate to remediate the attacks, investigate them, and push fixes to patch the vulnerability abused by NSO Group, as well as unspecified punitive damages.
WhatsApp’s spokesperson Zade Alsawah said in a statement that “our court case has made history as the first victory against illegal spyware that threatens the safety and privacy of everyone.”
Alsawah said the ruling “is an important step forward for privacy and security as the first victory against the development and use of illegal spyware that threatens the safety and privacy of everyone. Today, the jury’s decision to force NSO, a notorious foreign spyware merchant, to pay damages is a critical deterrent to this malicious industry against their illegal acts aimed at American companies and the privacy and security of the people we serve.”
NSO Group’s spokesperson Gil Lainer left the door open for an appeal.
“We will carefully examine the verdict’s details and pursue appropriate legal remedies, including further proceedings and an appeal,” Lainer said in a statement.
In March 2025, our team found a suspicious mach-O file named wsus. Read the full analysis on its likely origins, target users, and observed functionality.
Two spyware variants – Moonshine and BadBazaar – are being used to target the mobile devices of persons of interest to Chinese intelligence, including individuals in the Taiwanese, Tibetan and Uyghur communities.
In our first investigation into Israel-based spyware company, Paragon Solutions, we begin to untangle multiple threads connected to the proliferation of Paragon's mercenary spyware operations across the globe. This report includes an infrastructure analysis of Paragon’s spyware product, called Graphite; a forensic analysis of infected devices belonging to members of civil society; and a closer look at the use of Paragon spyware in both Canada and Italy.
Cybersecurity firm Lookout found several samples of a North Korean spyware it calls KoSpy.
Lookout researchers have discovered a novel Android surveillance tool dubber KoSpy. It is attributed to APT 37 aka ScarCruft
Amnesty International’s Security Lab uncovers sophisticated Cellebrite zero-day exploit, impacting billions of Android devices.
Amnesty International said that Google fixed previously unknown flaws in Android that allowed authorities to unlock phones using forensic tools. On
Security researchers found evidence that Cellebrite was used by Serbian police to hack into the cellphones of a local journalist and an activist.
Italian company SIO, which sells to government customers, is behind an Android spyware campaign called Spyrtacus that spoofed popular apps like WhatsApp, per security researchers.
As an undercover journalist covering Italian politics, Francesco Cancellato is used to reporting on scandals. But he never thought he would be part of the story.
Following allegations of potential abuse, Paragon Solutions has cut off Italy from its spyware systems.
Barcelone se mue en “capitale européenne de la cyberguerre”. Depuis un an et demi, “au moins trois équipes renommées d’experts en piratage informatique”, venus d’Israël, se sont installées dans la capitale de la Catalogne, détaille El Periódico de Catalunya. Le journal espagnol s’appuie sur les informations du quotidien de Tel-Aviv Ha’Aretz, qui a publié le 26 décembre un article sur les hackers “délocalisés” d’Israël vers des pays de l’Union européenne, dont l’Espagne.
Cybersecurity experts, who work with human rights defenders and journalists, agree that Apple is doing the right thing by sending notifications to victims of mercenary spyware — and at the same time refusing to forensically analyze the devices.
The precedent-setting ruling from a Northern California federal judge could lead to massive damages against NSO Group, whose notorious spyware has been reportedly used by various governments worldwide.
Apple rejects requests for a copy of a Harris campaign staffer's iPhone.
Serbian authorities are using spyware and Cellebrite forensic extraction tools to hack journalists and activists in a surveillance campaign.
Amnesty said it found NoviSpy, an Android spyware linked to Serbian intelligence, on the phones of several members of Serbian civil society following police stops.
Officials from EU anti-fraud office were allegedly followed, wiretapped and had their laptops hacked by Hungary’s intelligence agency.
