France, the UK, the US, and others will work on a framework for the responsible use of tools like NSO Group's Pegasus, and Shadowserver Foundation gains £1 million investment.

One of the hacking campaigns used exploits developed by Variston, a Barcelona-based startup. Sources say the spyware maker is losing staff.

A wide-spanning investigation by 404 Media reveals more details about a secretive spy tool that can tracks billions of phone profiles through the advertising industry called Patternz. Google has taken action in response to 404 Media's inquiries.

Security researchers found that infections with high-profile spyware Pegasus, Reign, and Predator could be discovered on compromised Apple mobile devices by checking Shutdown.log, a system log file that stores reboot events.

Apple's warnings in late October that Indian journalists and opposition figures may have been targeted by state-sponsored attacks prompted a forceful Behind closed doors, senior officials from Modi's administration demanded that Apple soften the political impact of the state-sponsored warnings, according to Washington Post.

We confirm that two members of Serbian civil society were targeted with spyware earlier this year. Both have publicly criticized the Serbian government. We are not naming the individuals at this time by their request. The Citizen Lab’s technical analysis of forensic artifacts was conducted in support of an investigation led by Access Now in collaboration with the SHARE Foundation. Researchers from Amnesty International independently analyzed the cases and their conclusions match our findings.

Access Now and our partners have discovered that civil society in Serbia have been targeted with invasive spyware technology. Here’s what we know.

In this report Kaspersky shares insights into the validation components used in Operation Triangulation, TriangleDB implant post-compromise activity, as well as details of some additional modules.
#2023 #APT #Apple #EN #Malware #Malware-Description #Triangulation #analysis #iOS #macOS #securelist #spyware

Between May and September 2023, former Egyptian MP Ahmed Eltantawy was targeted with Cytrox's Predator spyware via links sent on SMS and WhatsApp after Eltantawy publicly stated his plans to run for President in the 2024 Egyptian elections. As Egypt is a known customer of Cytrox's Predator spyware, and the spyware was delivered via network injection from a device located physically inside Egypt, we attribute the attack to the Egyptian government with high confidence.

Last week Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG), in partnership with The Citizen Lab, discovered an in-the-wild 0-day exploit chain for iPhones. Developed by the commercial surveillance vendor, Intellexa, this exploit chain is used to install its Predator spyware surreptitiously onto a device.

In response, yesterday, Apple patched the bugs in iOS 16.7 and iOS 17.0.1 as CVE-2023-41991, CVE-2023-41992, CVE-2023-41993. This quick patching from Apple helps to better protect users and we encourage all iOS users to install them as soon as possible.

This week, our engine detected two spyware hiding on the Google Play Store and affecting up to 1.5 million users.

A data breach reveals the spyware is built by a Polish developer

In researching Operation Triangulation, we set ourselves the goal to retrieve as many parts of the exploitation chain as possible. As of now, we have finished analyzing the spyware implant and are ready to share the details.
#2023 #APT #Apple #EN #Malware-Descriptions #Spyware #Targeted-attacks #Triangulation #iOS #malware #securelist

"Operation Triangulation" stole mic recordings, photos, geolocation, and more.

Hi all, Today we have very big and important news. Kaspersky experts have discovered an extremely complex, professionally targeted cyberattack that uses Apple’s mobile devices. The purpose of this attack is the inconspicuous introduction of spyware into the iPhones of employees of the company – both top and middle-management. The attack is carried out using

We would like to thank The Citizen Lab for their cooperation, support and inputs into this research.

• Commercial spyware use is on the rise, with actors leveraging these sophisticated tools to conduct surveillance operations against a growing number of targets. Cisco Talos has new details of a commercial spyware product sold by the spyware firm Intellexa (formerly known as Cytrox).
• Our research specifically looks at two components of this mobile spyware suite known as “ALIEN” and “PREDATOR,” which compose the backbone of the spyware implant. Our findings include an in-depth walkthrough of the infection chain, including the implants’ various information-stealing capabilities.
• A deep dive into both spyware components indicates that ALIEN is more than just a loader for PREDATOR and actively sets up the low-level capabilities needed for PREDATOR to spy on its victims.
• We assess with high confidence that the spyware has two additional components — tcore (main component) and kmem (privilege escalation mechanic) — but we were unable to obtain and analyze these modules.
• If readers suspect their system(s) may have been compromised by commercial spyware, please consider notifying Talos’ research team at talos-mercenary-spyware-help@external.cisco.com to assist in furthering the community’s knowledge of these threats.

Spyware is sold to countries including Egypt, Indonesia, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and Serbia.
Smartphone malware sold to governments around the world can surreptitiously record voice calls and nearby audio, collect data from apps such as Signal and WhatsApp, and hide apps or prevent them from running upon device reboots, researchers from Cisco’s Talos security team have found.

A joint investigation by civil society and independent researchers has uncovered hacking of Armenia spyware victims with NSO Group's Pegasus spyware.

Researchers at the Lookout Threat Lab have discovered a new Android surveillance tied to the Law Enforcement Command of the Islamic Republic of Iran (FARAJA).

Apple has fixed the three exploits used to deploy the Pegasus spyware, which did not require any interaction from the target.