Reckless Exploit: Mexican Journalists, Lawyers, and a Child Targeted with NSO Spyware – The Citizen Lab

In the past five years it has become increasingly clear that civil society is under threat from the misuse of powerful spyware tools exclusively sold to governments. Research has repeatedly shown how governments around the world use digital spying tools designed for criminal investigations and counterintelligence to target journalists, human rights defenders, and others.In August 2016, Citizen Lab released a report uncovering how United Arab Emirates (UAE) activist Ahmed Mansoor was targeted with “Pegasus” (sophisticated government-exclusive spyware) and “The Trident” (a chain of iOS zero day exploits) designed to infect his iPhone 6 via a malicious link in an SMS text message.

We attributed Pegasus and The Trident exploit chain to an Israel-based “cyber warfare” company, NSO Group.In February 2017 Citizen Lab, with assistance of Mexican non-governmental organizations (NGOs) R3D and SocialTic, documented how Mexican government food scientists, health, and consumer advocates also received links to infrastructure that we connected to NSO Group.

We suspect that the links were designed to install Pegasus on their phones.This report expands the Mexican investigation and shows how 10 Mexican journalists and human rights defenders, one minor child, and one United States citizen, were targeted with NSO’s Exploit Framework. Our investigation was conducted with the collaboration and assistance of R3D, SocialTic and Article 19. With their assistance, we have confirmed over 76 additional messages containing NSO exploit links. They are co-publishing an extensive investigation (in Spanish).

Källa: Reckless Exploit: Mexican Journalists, Lawyers, and a Child Targeted with NSO Spyware – The Citizen Lab