Citizen Lab: Apple has closed vulnerabilities in iPhones through which spyware was installed on the phone of an Egyptian journalist

Experts from Citizen Lab and Google Threat Analysis Group (TAG) reported spyware Predator 's that Egyptian journalist and political activist Ahmed Tantawi, who announced that he would participate in the presidential elections in 2024, was attacked by Cytrox due to three zero-day vulnerabilities in the operating system. iOS system .

Vulnerabilities were discovered in iOS versions prior to 16.6.1. Apple fixed them last week, the researchers emphasized.

“In August and September 2023, Vodafone Egypt’s mobile connection was continuously used for targeted network injection attacks. When Tantawi visited certain sites that did not use encryption , a third-party device on Vodafone Egypt's network automatically redirected him to a malicious site to infect his phone with Predator 's Cytrox spyware ,” writes Citizen Lab.

Tantawi was attacked via links sent via SMS and WhatsApp after he announced that he would run in Egypt's 2024 presidential elections .

“Given that Egypt is a known customer of Predator Cytrox 's spyware , and the spyware was delivered through the infiltration of a device physically located in Egypt into a mobile network, we have a high degree of confidence attributing the attack to the Egyptian government,” the experts concluded.

was installed on the phone of Meduza publisher Galina Timchenko In mid-September, it became known that in February, Pegasus , a spyware program developed by the Israeli company NSO Group, . Its capabilities are similar to Predator . This happened shortly after Russian authorities declared the publication “undesirable.” organization." At the same time, Timchenko participated in a confidential meeting of representatives of Russian independent media, organized in Berlin.

experts Access Now and Citizen Lab suggested that intelligence services from a number of countries could be involved in the attack - from Latvia, where Meduza has an office, to Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan or Uzbekistan. They all use Pegasus. The day after news of Timchenko’s phone being hacked, three more journalists living in Latvia spoke about Apple notifications warning of a possible hack.