Likely Ordered by Saudi Arabia & UAE
By: Ilana Siyance
An Israeli private intelligence firm sold Spyware which has allegedly been used to hack the phones of dozens of Al Jazeera journalists. As reported by The Guardian, the unprecedented cyber-attack may have been orchestrated by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as per leading researchers.
Researchers at Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto have released a new report divulging what seems to be a major espionage campaign against the Qatar-based global media network.
On Sunday night, Al Jazeera reported, on its TV broadcast in an Arabic channel, that 36 of its journalists were hacked. It did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Guardian.
The report, written by several of the world’s top digital surveillance researchers, attributes the hacks to Israeli firm, NSO Group’s operators — four distinct operators or “clusters”. The researchers believe with a “medium” degree of confidence that the operators acted on behalf of the Saudi government and also the UAE. The report also raises new questions about the apparent vulnerability of the Apple iPhone, which touts itself for security and commitment to privacy.
Researchers at Citizen Lab said the discovered malicious code, which they claim is used by clients of NSO Group, makes “almost all” iPhone devices susceptible unless users use newer Apple’s iOS, system 14 or later, which seems to have fixed the vulnerability. The alleged attack seems work with “zero click” technology, meaning that targets would not have needed to click on a link in order to become infected but rather malicious code was apparently delivered directly through Apple’s servers. Citizen Lab said this suggests the attacks are becoming “more sophisticated, less detectable”.
The alleged hack of Al Jazeera was learned when Tamer Almisshal, a seasoned investigative journalist for the Arabic network, got suspicious that his iPhone was compromised, and went to Citizen Lab for help. After discovering the issue, Citizen Lab said that it’s quite possible that what they found is only a “minuscule fraction” of the existing attacks on iPhone users.
NSO Group said in a statement to the Guardian, that it does not have info about the allegations. “As we have repeatedly stated we do not have access to any information with respect to the identities of individuals our system is used to conduct surveillance on. However, where we receive credible evidence of misuse, combined with the basic identifiers of the alleged targets and timeframes, we take all necessary steps in accordance with our product misuse investigation procedure to review the allegations,” said a NSO Group spokesperson.
