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...

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...

Charming Kitten's New Backdoor 'Sponsor' Targets Brazil, Israel, and U.A.E.

The Iranian threat actor known as Charming Kitten has been linked to a new wave of attacks targeting different entities in Brazil, Israel, and the U.A.E. using a previously undocumented backdoor named Sponsor. Slovak cybersecurity firm is tracking the cluster under the name Ballistic Bobcat...

Patchwork Hackers Target Chinese Research Organizations Using EyeShell Backdoor

Threat actors associated with the hacking crew known as Patchwork have been spotted targeting universities and research organizations in China as part of a recently observed campaign. The activity, according to KnownSec 404 Team, entailed the use of a backdoor codenamed EyeShell. Patchwork, also...

North Korean Kimsuky Hackers Strike Again with Advanced Reconnaissance Malware

The North Korean advanced persistent threat APT group known as Kimsuky has been observed using a piece of custom malware called RandomQuery as part of a reconnaissance and information exfiltration operation. "Lately, Kimsuky has been consistently distributing custom malware as part of...

Iranian Hackers Target Women Involved in Human Rights and Middle East Politics

Iranian state-sponsored actors are continuing to engage in social engineering campaigns targeting researchers by impersonating a U.S. think tank. "Notably the targets in this instance were all women who are actively involved in political affairs and human rights in the Middle East region,"...

Spy Cams Reveal the Grim Reality of Slaughterhouse Gas Chambers

Animal rights activists have captured the first hidden-camera video from inside a carbon dioxide “stunning chamber” in a US meatpacking plant...

Molerats Hackers Hiding New Espionage Attacks Behind Public Cloud Infrastructure

An active espionage campaign has been attributed to the threat actor known as Molerats that abuses legitimate cloud services like Google Drive and Dropbox to host malware payloads and for command-and-control and the exfiltration of data from targets across the Middle East. The cyber offensive is...

New Chinotto Spyware Targets North Korean Defectors, Human Rights Activists

North Korean defectors, journalists who cover North Korea-related news, and entities in South Korea are being zeroed in on by a nation-state-sponsored advanced persistent threat APT as part of a new wave of highly-targeted surveillance attacks. Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky attributed the...

Researchers Uncover Hacker-for-Hire Group That's Active Since 2015

A new cyber mercenary hacker-for-hire group dubbed "Void Balaur" has been linked to a string of cyberespionage and data theft activities targeting thousands of entities as well as human rights activists, politicians, and government officials around the world at least since 2015 for financial gain...

Facebook's NSO Group Lawsuit Over WhatsApp Spying Set to Proceed

Facebook’s lawsuit against NSO Group over alleged spying on WhatsApp users will be allowed to go forward. WhatsApp-owner Facebook is alleging that NSO Group exploited a vulnerability in WhatsApp to deploy its spyware against human rights activists, journalists and political dissidents. A federal...

Facebook Sues Israeli NSO Spyware Firm For Hacking WhatsApp Users

Finally, for the very first time, an encrypted messaging service provider is taking legal action against a private entity that has carried out malicious attacks against its users. Facebook filed a lawsuit against Israeli mobile surveillance firm NSO Group on Tuesday, alleging that the company was...

Google Warns of Android Zero-Day Bug Under Active Attack

Google is warning of an Android zero-day flaw actively being exploited in the wild, which gives an attacker full control over 18 phone models including its flagship Pixel handset and devices made by Samsung, Huawei and Xiaomi. Google’s Project Zero warned late Thursday that it suspected the...

Powerful Android and iOS Spyware Found Deployed in 45 Countries

One of the world's most dangerous Android and iPhone spyware program has been found deployed against targets across 45 countries around the world over the last two years, a new report from Citizen Lab revealed. The infamous spyware, dubbed Pegasus, is developed by NSO Group—an Israeli company whi...

NSO Spyware Targets Saudi Human Rights Activists and Researchers

Amnesty International, one of the most prominent non-profit human rights organizations in the world, claims one of its staff members has been targeted by a sophisticated surveillance tool made by Israel's NSO Group. The NSO Group is an Israeli firm that's mostly known for selling high-tech spywar...

NSO Spyware Targets Saudi Human Rights Activists and Researchers

Amnesty International, one of the most prominent non-profit human rights organizations in the world, claims one of its staff members has been targeted by a sophisticated surveillance tool made by Israel's NSO Group. The NSO Group is an Israeli firm that's mostly known for selling high-tech spywar...

Detekt — Free Anti-Malware Tool To Detect Govt. Surveillance Malware

Human rights experts and Privacy International have launched a free tool allowing users to scan their computers for surveillance spyware, typically used by governments and other organizations to spy on human rights activists and journalists around the world. This free-of-charge anti-surveillance...

Russian President rejected US demand to extradite Edward Snowden

Russian President Vladimir Putin bluntly rejected U.S. pleas to extradite National Security Agency Whistleblower Edward Snowden on Tuesday, says since Snowden has not committed a crime in that country, the government will not extradite him back. Putin said, "Mr. Snowden is a free man," Snowden di...

Stolen Certificates Found in Malware Possibly Targeting Tibetan Groups

The recent trend of attackers using stolen digital certificates to make their malicious executables look legitimate is continuing unabated, with researchers now having come across a series of variants of the Etchfro Trojan that are using certificates taken from several companies and issued by...

China-Based Attacks Targeted Gmail of U.S. Officials, Activists

Search giant Google has again sounded the alarm about sophisticated attacks emanating from mainland China and targeting officials within the U.S. and Asian governments, as well as human rights activists and journalists. Samples of some of the messages posted on an independent researcher’s blog...