Category Archives: Citizen Lab

Zero-click iPhone exploit, NSO Group spyware used to target Mideast journalists, Citizen Lab says

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Hackers suspected to work for the governments of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates breached 36 devices belonging to Al Jazeera journalists in recent months by using a zero-click iPhone exploit and NSO Group spyware, according to new Citizen Lab research published Sunday. The suspected government hackers behind the operations had a particularly pernicious tactic for accessing their targets — an iPhone iMessage that requires zero interaction from the target to work, according to the researchers. Citizen Lab is based at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. The hacking operations, which researchers attribute to the governments of Saudi Arabia and the UAE with “medium confidence,” could have allowed the operators to record audio, take pictures, track device location and access passwords or stored credentials on compromised phones, the researchers said. Qatar, where Al Jazeera is based, historically has a fraught relationship with […]

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Researchers suggest 25 countries are using a kind of mobile spyware that monitors texts, location

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A private surveillance firm that exploits mobile network vulnerabilities to spy on calls, texts and location data is doing business with at least 25 governments around the globe, including some with histories of human rights abuses, concludes a report released Tuesday. The findings from the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab scrutinize the work of the company Circles, which is a sister firm of the Israeli software surveillance broker NSO Group. Human rights activists frequently criticize NSO Group for selling its equipment to repressive regimes, a charge it rejects, even as it is the subject of a lawsuit from Facebook, which alleges that attackers used NSO Group tech to spy on thousands of WhatsApp users. The countries Citizen Lab identified as “likely” customers of Circles: Australia, Belgium, Botswana, Chile, Denmark, Ecuador, El Salvador, Estonia, Equatorial Guinea, Guatemala, Honduras, Indonesia, Israel, Kenya, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, Nigeria, Peru, Serbia, Thailand, the United Arab Emirates, Vietnam, Zambia and Zimbabwe. […]

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Flaw in Philippines’ contact-tracing app served up data on 30K health care providers, research finds

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A web and mobile phone application that the Philippines government uses to track coronavirus cases contained a flaw that could have allowed access to the names of tens of thousands of health care providers that use the app in that country, according to new research. The flaw has been fixed, but it stands out as another cautionary tale of how software tools used to combat the pandemic can open up new fronts in data insecurity. Multinational company Dure Technologies and officials from the World Health Organization and the Philippines Department of Health developed the app to efficiently report COVID-19 cases and help with contact tracing, and released it in June. But when researchers from the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab investigated the app’s code, they found pressing security issues. A web version of the app, which is known as COVID-KAYA, had a flaw in its authentication logic that revealed the […]

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Religious, political leaders in Togo allegedly targeted with NSO Group spyware

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The list of people allegedly targeted by NSO Group surveillance software is growing by the day. Religious and political opposition leaders in Togo were targeted last year with spyware developed by Israeli software surveillance firm NSO Group, according to security researchers at University of Toronto Munk School’s Citizen Lab. Like many of the company’s past actions, the alleged NSO surveillance in Togo used Facebook’s WhatsApp to target religious clergy and politicians, Citizen Lab researchers said. The effort was part of a broader hacking campaign that targeted thousands of WhatsApp users with NSO Group spyware in 2019, according to Citizen Lab. NSO Group has repeatedly said that its software is only sold to law enforcement or intelligence agencies in order to target terrorists and criminals. But the revelations about surveillance in Togo are just the latest allegations that NSO Group spyware has enabled surveillance of political opponents and other perceived government […]

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Research shows human rights activists in India were targeted with spyware, including NSO’s Pegasus

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Human rights activists in India were targeted by a coordinated spyware campaign from January to October of 2019, according to research published Monday by Amnesty International and the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab. Nine activists in total were targeted, eight of which have been calling for the release of 11 people jailed during protests related to the violent uprising in Bhima Koregaon, India in 2018. The targets were sent spearphishing emails with malicious links and files that, if clicked, would infect the victims’ computers with spyware capable of tracking their communications. Three of the activists were targeted by Pegasus, a notorious spyware program developed by Israeli surveillance software firm NSO Group, according to Amnesty and Citizen Lab. Human rights defenders in India have been victimized by spyware in the past. But the research shows that surveillance software has been leveraged multiple times against activists linked to the Bhima Koregaon activists. One […]

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Vast hack-for-hire scheme against activists, corporate targets tied to Indian IT firm

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An Indian cybersecurity firm operated a widespread hack-for-hire scheme that, for a span of seven years, aimed to steal passwords from journalists, advocacy groups, investment firms and an array of other targets, according to new research. Since 2013, thousands of people throughout the world have been targeted with phishing emails that appeared to come from friends, co-workers, Facebook, pornography websites and other sources. In fact, the emails aimed to trick recipients into providing their username and password to BellTroX InfoTech Services, an Indian security firm that aimed to hack organizations on behalf of its clients, according to the internet watchdog group Citizen Lab, a research group affiliated with the University of Toronto. Citizen Lab did not provide details on the company’s clients, but did count the net neutrality advocacy groups Fight for the Future and the Electronic Frontier Foundation among the intended victims. Environmental groups working on the #ExxonKnew campaign, which […]

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WeChat is Surveilling International User Files to Strengthen China’s National Censorship Model

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Chinese social media giant WeChat is screening documents and images shared by overseas users, according to researchers from the Citizen Lab of the University of Toronto. As of late 2019, the messaging app is said to have had more than 1 billion active … Continue reading WeChat is Surveilling International User Files to Strengthen China’s National Censorship Model→

Zoom bolsters software security in latest move to reassure users

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Zoom, the videoconferencing service whose popularity has soared during the coronavirus pandemic, on Wednesday said it was adding security measures to its software following scrutiny from independent researchers. The next version of Zoom, to be released this week, will have stronger encryption for data sent between participants in a meeting to prevent tampering, the Silicon Valley-based company said. The software will also allow Zoom account administrators to choose which parts of the world they route their data through. The upgrade follows a report from the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab that found Zoom routed some meeting encryption keys through China. The updates are an effort to adapt to the unprecedented amount of people using Zoom as they work from home during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some 200 million people used the software on a daily basis in March, and the Silicon Valley company at first appeared unprepared for the privacy and […]

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Zoom has fixed an eavesdropping issue tied to their ‘waiting rooms’

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Earlier this week video teleconferencing company Zoom fixed an issue that would have allowed users in Zoom “waiting rooms” to spy on meetings even if they weren’t approved to attend them, according to researchers at Toronto-based Citizen Lab. Before the fix, which was issued on Sunday, Zoom servers automatically sent live streams of meetings and meeting decryption keys to the users in the rooms, where they must wait for approval to join a meeting. This vulnerability allowed those users to eavesdrop without approval. “Because users in a Zoom waiting room are not yet approved to join the meeting, and Zoom’s documentation appears to promote waiting rooms as a confidentiality feature, we assessed that this issue could represent a security concern,” Bill Marczak, a senior research fellow at Citizen Lab, and John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at Citizen Lab, write in a blog post on the issue. The vulnerability would have been particularly relevant […]

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WhatsApp’s NSO Group Lawsuit, This Week in Data Breaches, Office 365 Voicemail Phishing

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You’re listening to the Shared Security Podcast, exploring the trust you put in people, apps, and technology…with your host, Tom Eston. In episode 93 for November 4th 2019: The WhatsApp NSO group lawsuit plus details on Facebook’s pre… Continue reading WhatsApp’s NSO Group Lawsuit, This Week in Data Breaches, Office 365 Voicemail Phishing→