Meet the team that investigates when journalists and activists get hacked with government spyware


For more than a decade, dozens of journalists and human rights activists have been targeted and hacked by governments all over the world. Cops and spies in Ethiopia, Greece, Hungary, India, Mexico, Poland, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates, among others, have used sophisticated spyware to compromise the phones of these victims, who at times have also faced real-world violence being intimidated, harassed, and in extreme cases, even murdered.

In the last few years, in the fight to protect these higher-risk communities, a team of a dozen digital security experts, mostly based in Costa Rica, Manila, and Tunisia, among other places, have played a key role. They work for the New York-headquartered nonprofit Access Now, specifically its Digital Security Helpline.

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:

  • NSO Group Impersonates Facebook Security Team to Spread Spyware — Report

    May 22, 2020

    According to an investigative journalist team, the Israeli authors of the infamous Pegasus mobile spyware, NSO Group, have been using a spoofed Facebook login page, crafted to look like an internal Facebook security team portal, to lure victims in. The news comes as Facebook alleges that NSO Group has been using U.S.-based infrastructure to launch espionage ...

  • This powerful Android malware stayed hidden for years, infecting tens of thousands of smartphones

    May 14, 2020

    A carefully managed hacking and espionage campaign is infecting smartphones with a potent form of Android malware, providing those behind it with total control of the device, while also remaining completely hidden from the user. Mandrake spyware abuses legitimate Android functions to help gain access to everything on the compromised device in attacks that can gather ...

  • Upgraded Cerberus Spyware Spreads Rapidly via MDM

    May 1, 2020

    A newly discovered variant of the Cerberus Android trojan has been spotted, with vastly expanded and more sophisticated info-harvesting capabilities, and the ability to run TeamViewer. It was spotted by researchers being used in a targeted campaign on a multinational conglomerate. Unusually, the sample propagated through the employee pool via the infected company’s mobile device management ...

  • Oil and Gas Firms Targeted With Agent Tesla Spyware

    April 21, 2020

    Attackers are targeting energy companies with the Agent Tesla spyware, as seen in recent spearphishing emails with malicious attachments. Researchers say that until now, Agent Tesla has not been associated with campaigns targeting the oil-and-gas vertical. The emails leverage the tumultuous nature of today’s oil and gas markets, which have been under tremendous stress in recent weeks, as ...

  • Australian Health Insurance-Themed Spam Spreads Ursnif

    April 21, 2020

    Trend Micro researchers encountered a spam campaign referencing the Australian health insurance brand Medicare. The attachment, which Trend Micro detects as Trojan.X97M.URSNIF.THDAEBO, downloads the malicious file (detected as TrojanSpy.Win32.URSNIF.THDAEBO). The campaign aims to spread the spyware Ursnif, also known as Gozi. The email headers pertain to payment transactions with the words “Statement,” “Invoice,” or “Transaction,” and include a ...

  • Coronavirus Update App Leads to Project Spy Android and iOS Spyware

    April 14, 2020

    Trend Micro has discovered a potential cyberespionage campaign, which we have named Project Spy, that infects Android and iOS devices with spyware (detected by Trend Micro as AndroidOS_ProjectSpy.HRX and IOS_ProjectSpy.A, respectively). Project Spy uses the ongoing coronavirus pandemic as a lure, posing as an app called Coronavirus Updates. We also found similarities in two older samples ...