Amnesty International Warns That World Cup Fans Face Potential Human Rights Violations

The organization claims that the FIFA tournament could have impacts on the rights of local people and visiting soccer fans in all three host countries...

Iran-Linked RedKitten Cyber Campaign Targets Human Rights NGOs and Activists

A Farsi-speaking threat actor aligned with Iranian state interests is suspected to be behind a new campaign targeting non-governmental organizations and individuals involved in documenting recent human rights abuses. The activity, observed by HarfangLab in January 2026, has been codenamed...

Deliberate Internet Shutdowns

For two days in September, Afghanistan had no internet. No satellite failed; no cable was cut. This was a deliberate outage, mandated by the Taliban government. It followed a more localized shutdown two weeks prior, reportedly instituted "to prevent immoral activities." No additional explanation...

NSO Group Fined $168M for Targeting 1,400 WhatsApp Users With Pegasus Spyware

A federal jury on Tuesday decided that NSO Group must pay Meta-owned WhatsApp WhatsApp approximately $168 million in monetary damages, more than four months after a federal judge ruled that the Israeli company violated U.S. laws by exploiting WhatsApp servers to deploy Pegasus spyware, targeting...

Targeted spyware and why it’s a concern to us

Experts are again warning about the proliferating market for targeted spyware and espionage. Before we dive into the world of targeted spyware, it's worth looking at a few of the main players that are active in and against this industry. Paragon Solutions is an Israeli company which sells high-en...

Russian Hackers Deploy HATVIBE and CHERRYSPY Malware Across Europe and Asia

Threat actors with ties to Russia have been linked to a cyber espionage campaign aimed at organizations in Central Asia, East Asia, and Europe. Recorded Future's Insikt Group, which has assigned the activity cluster the name TAG-110, said it overlaps with a threat group tracked by the Computer...

More Spyware, Fewer Rules: What Trump’s Return Means for US Cybersecurity

Experts expect Donald Trump’s next administration to relax cybersecurity rules on businesses, abandon concerns around human rights, and take an aggressive stance against the cyber armies of US adversaries...

Chinese-Speaking Hacker Group Targets Human Rights Studies in Middle East

Unnamed government entities in the Middle East and Malaysia are the target of a persistent cyber campaign orchestrated by a threat actor known as Tropic Trooper since June 2023. "Sighting this group's Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures in critical governmental entities in the Middle East,...

Vietnamese Human Rights Group Targeted in Multi-Year Cyberattack by APT32

A non-profit supporting Vietnamese human rights has been the target of a multi-year campaign designed to deliver a variety of malware on compromised hosts. Cybersecurity company Huntress attributed the activity to a threat cluster tracked as APT32, a Vietnamese-aligned hacking crew that's also...

Brazil Halts Meta's AI Data Processing Amid Privacy Concerns

Brazil's data protection authority, Autoridade Nacional de Proteção de Dados ANPD, has temporarily banned Meta from processing users' personal data to train the company's artificial intelligence AI algorithms. The ANPD said it found "evidence of processing of personal data based on inadequate leg...

North Korean Hackers Exploit Facebook Messenger in Targeted Malware Campaign

The North Korea-linked Kimsuky hacking group has been attributed to a new social engineering attack that employs fictitious Facebook accounts to targets via Messenger and ultimately delivers malware. "The threat actor created a Facebook account with a fake identity disguised as a public official...

Talos joins CISA to counter cyber threats against non-profits, activists and other at-risk communities

Cisco Talos is delighted to share updates about our ongoing partnership with the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA to combat cybersecurity threats facing civil society organizations. Talos has partnered with CISA on several initiatives through the Joint Cyber Defense...

Starry Addax targets human rights defenders in North Africa with new malware

Cisco Talos is disclosing a new threat actor we deemed "Starry Addax" targeting mostly human rights activists associated with the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic SADR cause with a novel mobile malware. Starry Addax conducts phishing attacks tricking their targets into installing malicious Androi...

Friday Squid Blogging: The Geopolitics of Eating Squid

New York Times op-ed on the Chinese dominance of the squid industry: Chinas domination in seafood has raised deep concerns among American fishermen, policymakers and human rights activists. They warn that China is expanding its maritime reach in ways that are putting domestic fishermen around the...

U.S. Cracks Down on Predatory Spyware Firm for Targeting Officials and Journalists

The U.S. Department of Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control OFAC sanctioned two individuals and five entities associated with the Intellexa Alliance for their role in "developing, operating, and distributing" commercial spyware designed to target government officials, journalists, and poli...

EU Court of Human Rights Rejects Encryption Backdoors

The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that breaking end-to-end encryption by adding backdoors violates human rights: Seemingly most critically, the Russian government told the ECHR that any intrusion on private lives resulting from decrypting messages was "necessary" to combat terrorism in...

Meta Warns of 8 Spyware Firms Targeting iOS, Android, and Windows Devices

Meta Platforms said it took a series of steps to curtail malicious activity from eight different firms based in Italy, Spain, and the United Arab Emirates U.A.E. operating in the surveillance-for-hire industry. The findings are part of its Adversarial Threat Report for the fourth quarter of 2023...

Global Coalition and Tech Giants Unite Against Commercial Spyware Abuse

A coalition of dozens of countries, including France, the U.K., and the U.S., along with tech companies such as Google, MDSec, Meta, and Microsoft, have signed a joint agreement to curb the abuse of commercial spyware to commit human rights abuses. The initiative, dubbed the Pall Mall Process, ai...

U.S. Imposes Visa Restrictions on those Involved in Illegal Spyware Surveillance

The U.S. State Department said it's implementing a new policy that imposes visa restrictions on individuals who are linked to the illegal use of commercial spyware to surveil civil society members. "The misuse of commercial spyware threatens privacy and freedoms of expression, peaceful assembly,...

Pegasus Spyware Targeted iPhones of Journalists and Activists in Jordan

The iPhones belonging to nearly three dozen journalists, activists, human rights lawyers, and civil society members in Jordan have been targeted with NSO Group's Pegasus spyware, according to joint findings from Access Now and the Citizen Lab. Nine of the 35 individuals have been publicly confirm...