Lookout Blog is dedicated to tracking spyware and the vulnerabilities they use to accomplish their tasks. A recent posting details how governments may use spyware against those who threaten the power-base:
Ahmed Mansoor is an internationally recognized human rights defender and a Martin Ennals Award Laureate (sometimes referred to as a “Nobel prize for human rights”), based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). On August 10th and 11th, he received text messages promising “secrets” about detainees tortured in UAE jails if he clicked on an included link. Instead of clicking, Mansoor sent the messages to Citizen Lab researchers. Recognizing the links as belonging to an exploit infrastructure connected to NSO group, Citizen Lab collaborated with Lookout to determine that the links led to a chain of zero-day exploits that would have jailbroken Mansoor’s iPhone and installed sophisticated malware.
This marks the third time Mansoor has been targeted with “lawful intercept” malware. Previous Citizen Lab research found that in 2011 he was targeted with FinFisher spyware, and in 2012 with Hacking Team spyware. The use of such expensive tools against Mansoor shows the lengths that governments are willing to go to target activists.
Citizen Lab also found evidence that state-sponsored actors used NSO’s exploit infrastructure against a Mexican journalist who reported on corruption by Mexico’s head of state, and an unknown target or targets in Kenya.
The NSO group used fake domains, impersonating sites such as the International Committee for the Red Cross, the U.K. government’s visa application processing website, and a wide range of news organizations and major technology companies. This nods toward the targeted nature of this software.
It’s interesting – and depressing – to note how a government operates at one level of civilization, while a journalist might be argued is unique to another level of civilization. The more barbarian government operates against its own citizen/journalist using the most modern of tools in order to preserve its power.
