Security researchers at digital rights unit The Citizen Lab say government spyware makers are abusing global advertising networks to target and hack devices by serving malicious online adverts.
A new report published Thursday by the University of Toronto lab, which investigates surveillance and digital rights abuses, said an Israeli company called Discover-Tech allows spyware makers to use its advertising platform to target specific people or devices almost anywhere in the world with spyware capable of invisibly stealing their data.
The researchers say Discover-Tech presents itself as a legitimate advertising firm, but instead serves as a “bridge between ad vendors and the mercenary spyware ecosystem.”
Read more…
Source: TechCrunch News
Sign up for the Cyber Security Review Newsletter
The latest cyber security news and insights delivered right to your inbox
Related:
- A fake WatchGuard VPN site is stealing your passwords
October 18, 2026
A fraudulent WatchGuard download website stole VPN login details while supplying the authentic installation package, experts have claimed. Security investigators at Huntress traced the activity to a lookalike domain that collected connection details before downloading the legitimate client. The investigation began after suspicious activity involving an administrator working for a managed service provider was detected. Read more… Source: TechRadar ...
- GitLab CI/CD Regex Integer Overflow (CVE-2026-97229)
October 16, 2026
On October 12, 2026, GitLab released 19.4.2, 19.3.5, and 19.2.8 to fix CVE-2026-97229, an integer overflow in its CI/CD regular-expression handling. The issue was reported through HackerOne by joaxcar. GitLab assigned it a CVSS score of 10.0 and described possible code execution by an unauthenticated user. The advisory states that CVE-2026-97229 affects GitLab CE and EE ...
- Cyber threat actors use a variety of techniques to target election and campaign officials
October 16, 2026
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) are providing this Public Service Announcement (PSA) to raise awareness of the cyber threats facing election and campaign officials during the upcoming 2026 U.S. midterm elections. Additionally, this announcement provides the public with information on techniques, including phishing1 and smishing2, that ...
- Attack on BAE-managed system disrupts US bankruptcy courts
October 16, 2026
The US’ bankruptcy courts are currently down owing to what officials are calling a “cybersecurity incident.” The Administrative Office of the US Courts said the websites and systems that support the Bankruptcy Noticing Center (BNC), which manages electronic comms related to bankruptcy cases, were pulled offline while the vendor investigates. BAE Systems runs the affected systems and ...
- Eiliko robot companion exposes private chats and can be hijacked
October 16, 2026
The Verge reports that Eiliko, a small AI robot companion made by Energize Lab, has serious security flaws that expose private conversations and let an attacker remotely change what the toy says. According to The Verge, researcher Sammy Azdoufal could access 13 million conversations and what appeared to be the entire active worldwide fleet of 68,000 ...
- AI-Powered Espionage Campaign Targets Government Linux Infrastructure
October 15, 2026
Unit 42 identified a campaign targeting government entities and state-affiliated infrastructure, with observed activity spanning from October 2025–April 2026. We track this activity as CL-UNK-1211. In the operations we witnessed, the attackers relied on AI-generated payloads. Multiple artifacts deployed throughout the intrusion contained AI-made conversational annotations and developer reasoning comments, suggesting that the code was either ...