Mon 21 December 2020:
Government operatives linked to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates hacked the personal phones belonging to journalists, producers, anchors and executives of the Al Jazeera news network, according to a report released by Canadian Citizen Lab.
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have hacked the phones of dozens of journalists using spy software developed by Israeli firm NSO Group, according to a report
Citizen Lab, an interdisciplinary laboratory part of Toronto University, said Sunday that Pegasus spyware was used to hack 36 personal phones belonging to journalists, producers, anchors, and executives at Al Jazeera, as well as one personal phone of a journalist at London-based Al Araby TV. The hackings were done in July and August with an iMessage zero-click exploit called Kismet.
The study noted that all of the hacked phones were iPhones and the malicious code only made those phones vulnerable which were under Apple’s iOS 14 system.
“We do not believe that KISMET works against iOS 14 and above, which includes new security protections. All iOS device owners should immediately update to the latest version of the operating system,” it added.
A total of four Pegasus operators, including Saudi Arabia’s Monarchy and UAE’s Sneaky Kestrel, have been used during the hackings.
The infrastructure used in these attacks included servers in Germany, France, UK, and Italy, using cloud providers Aruba, Choopa, CloudSigma, and DigitalOcean, according to the report.
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The lab said that it has informed Apple about the findings and the company has confirmed that it is working on the matter.
Meanwhile, the personal phone of a London-based Al Araby TV journalist was also compromised, the Citizen Lab claims.
The spyware is able to record audio from the microphone, including audio of encrypted phone calls, and take pictures, the report said. It can also track device location, as well as access passwords and stored credentials, according to the report.
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“The zero-click techniques used against Al Jazeera staff were sophisticated, difficult to detect, and largely focused on the personal devices of reporters,” the report said.
One investigative journalist from Al Jazeera who thought his phone was hacked allowed the Citizen Lab to install a VPN application to monitor metadata associated with his Internet traffic.
When researchers reviewed his VPN logs, they found that in July, his phone — without his knowledge — had visited a website used to infect a target with the Pegasus spyware, the report said.
In January, Guardian reported that the Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos had his mobile phone hacked in 2018 after receiving a WhatsApp message that had been sent from the personal account of the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Muhammad bin-Salman.
Large amounts of data were extracted from Bezos’ phone during the hack, it further reported.
Both Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. have had a fractious relationship with Qatar and Al Jazeera. As the Citizen Lab noted, both countries have concerns about Al Jazeera’s critical coverage, including of the Arab Spring uprisings in the early 2010s.
The governments also claim that Qatar shelters dissidents from Egypt, Bahrain, the U.A.E. and Saudi Arabia, and supports political Islamist groups.
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