U.S. State Department phones hacked with Israeli company spyware

Apple Inc iPhones of at least nine U.S. State Department employees were hacked by an unknown assailant using sophisticated spyware developed by the Israel-based NSO Group, according to four people familiar with the matter. The hacks, which took place in Read More …

Cyprus: Surveillance firm pays $1 million fine after ‘spy van’ scandal

The Office of the Commissioner for Personal Data Protection in Cyprus has collected a $1 million fine from intelligence company WiSpear for gathering mobile data from various individuals arriving at the airport in Larnaca. While this is just an administrative Read More …

Fake end-to-end encrypted chat app distributes Android spyware

The GravityRAT remote access trojan is being distributed in the wild again, this time under the guise of an end-to-end encrypted chat application called SoSafe Chat. This particular RAT (remote access trojan) targets predominately Indian users, being distributed by Pakistani Read More …

New PhoneSpy Android Spyware Poses Pegasus-Like Threat

Researchers discovered new Android spyware that provides similar capabilities to NSO Group’s Pegasus controversial software. Called PhoneSpy, the mobile surveillance-ware has been spotted activity targeting South Koreans without their knowledge. PhoneSpy disguises itself as a legitimate application and gives attackers Read More …

6 Palestinian rights activists hacked by NSO spyware, report says

Security researchers disclosed Monday that spyware from the notorious Israeli hacker-for-hire company NSO Group was detected on the cellphones of six Palestinian human rights activists, half affiliated with groups that Israel’s defense minister controversially claimed were involved in terrorism. The Read More …

US sanctions NSO Group, Israeli spyware company at centre of Pegasus Papers

The US is sanctioning an Israeli spyware company that it accused of supplying technology to foreign governments “to maliciously target government officials, journalists, businesspeople, activists, academics, and embassy workers”. NSO Group had been accused of assisting despotic regimes in targeting Read More …

Twitter Suspends Accounts Used to Snare Security Researchers

Twitter has shuttered two accounts – @lagal1990 and @shiftrows13 – specifically used to trick security researchers into downloading malware in a long-running cyber-espionage campaign attributed to North Korea. The campaign was first discovered by the Google Threat Analysis Group (TAG) Read More …