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:
- Data breach reveals Catwatchful ‘stalkerware’ is spying on thousands of phones
July 2, 2025
A security vulnerability in a stealthy Android spyware operation called Catwatchful has exposed thousands of its customers, including its administrator. The bug, which was discovered by security researcher Eric Daigle, spilled the spyware app’s full database of email addresses and plaintext passwords that Catwatchful customers use to access the data stolen from the phones of their ...
- SparkKitty, SparkCat’s little brother: A new Trojan spy found in the App Store and Google Play
June 23, 2025
In January 2025, Kaspersky researchers uncovered the SparkCat spyware campaign, which was aimed at gaining access to victims’ crypto wallets. The threat actor distributed apps containing a malicious SDK/framework. This component would wait for a user to open a specific screen (typically a support chat), then request access to the device’s gallery. It would then use ...
- Apple fixes new iPhone zero-day bug used in Paragon spyware hacks
June 12, 2025
Researchers revealed on Thursday that two European journalists had their iPhones hacked with spyware made by Paragon. Apple says it has fixed the bug that was used to hack their phones. The Citizen Lab wrote in its report, shared with TechCrunch ahead of its publication, that Apple had told its researchers that the flaw exploited in ...
- Italy and Israeli Paragon part ways after spyware affair
June 9, 2025
Italy has terminated a contract with Israeli spyware maker Paragon, a parliamentary document showed on Monday, following allegations that the Italian government used its technology to hack critics’ phones. Paragon did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. Meta’s WhatsApp chat service said earlier this year Paragon spyware had targeted scores of users, including ...
- Eight things we learned from WhatsApp vs. NSO Group spyware lawsuit
May 30, 2025
On May 6, WhatsApp scored a major victory against NSO Group when a jury ordered the infamous spyware maker to pay more than $167 million in damages to the Meta-owned company. The ruling concluded a legal battle spanning more than five years, which started in October 2019 when WhatsApp accused NSO Group of hacking more than ...
- Mysterious hacking group Careto was run by the Spanish government
May 23, 2025
More than a decade ago, researchers at antivirus company Kaspersky identified suspicious internet traffic of what they thought was a known government-backed group, based on similar targeting and its phishing techniques. Soon, the researchers realized they had found a much more advanced hacking operation that was targeting the Cuban government, among others. Eventually the researchers were ...

