We confirm that two members of Serbian civil society were targeted with spyware earlier this year. Both have publicly criticized the Serbian government. We are not naming the individuals at this time by their request. The Citizen Lab’s technical analysis of forensic artifacts was conducted in support of an investigation led by Access Now in collaboration with the SHARE Foundation. Researchers from Amnesty International independently analyzed the cases and their conclusions match our findings.
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.
Last week Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG), in partnership with The Citizen Lab, discovered an in-the-wild 0-day exploit chain for iPhones. Developed by the commercial surveillance vendor, Intellexa, this exploit chain is used to install its Predator spyware surreptitiously onto a device.
In response, yesterday, Apple patched the bugs in iOS 16.7 and iOS 17.0.1 as CVE-2023-41991, CVE-2023-41992, CVE-2023-41993. This quick patching from Apple helps to better protect users and we encourage all iOS users to install them as soon as possible.
Hi all, Today we have very big and important news. Kaspersky experts have discovered an extremely complex, professionally targeted cyberattack that uses Apple’s mobile devices. The purpose of this attack is the inconspicuous introduction of spyware into the iPhones of employees of the company – both top and middle-management. The attack is carried out using
We would like to thank The Citizen Lab for their cooperation, support and inputs into this research.
Spyware is sold to countries including Egypt, Indonesia, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and Serbia.
Smartphone malware sold to governments around the world can surreptitiously record voice calls and nearby audio, collect data from apps such as Signal and WhatsApp, and hide apps or prevent them from running upon device reboots, researchers from Cisco’s Talos security team have found.
Microsoft analyzes a threat group tracked as DEV-0196, the actor’s iOS malware “KingsPawn”, and their link to an Israel-based private sector offensive actor (PSOA) known as QuaDream, which reportedly sells a suite of exploits, malware, and infrastructure called REIGN, that’s designed to exfiltrate data from mobile devices.
At least five civil society victims of QuaDream’s spyware and exploits were identified in North America, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. Victims include journalists, political opposition figures, and an NGO worker. Traces of a suspected iOS 14 zero-click exploit used to deploy QuaDream’s spyware.
Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG) tracks actors involved in information operations (IO), government backed attacks and financially motivated abuse. For years, TAG has been tracking the activities of commercial spyware vendors to protect users. Today, we actively track more than 30 vendors with varying levels of sophistication and public exposure selling exploits or surveillance capabilities to government backed actors. These vendors are enabling the proliferation of dangerous hacking tools, arming governments that would not be able to develop these capabilities in-house. While use of surveillance technologies may be legal under national or international laws, they are often found to be used by governments to target dissidents, journalists, human rights workers and opposition party politicians.