Recent research by Security Lab partner organisations, Access Now, Citizen Lab and Reporters Without Borders has demonstrated the continued use of the highly invasive spyware Pegasus. 

Activists in Togo risk being targeted by shadowy cyber-mercenaries who use covert digital attacks to try and steal victims’ private information to sell to private clients, a new Amnesty International investigation has uncovered.

New evidence uncovered by Amnesty International and Forbidden Stories has revealed that Rwandan authorities used NSO Group’s spyware to potentially target more than 3,500 activists, journalists and politicians. It was also used to infect the phone of Carine Kanimba, Paul Rusesabagina’s daughter, of Hotel Rwanda fame.

South Sudan’s National Security Service (NSS) is using abusive surveillance to terrorize journalists, activists and critics, leading to a climate of intense fear and self-censorship, Amnesty International said in a new report.

In June 2018, an Amnesty International staff member received a malicious WhatsApp message with Saudi Arabia-related bait content and carrying links Amnesty International believes are used to distribute and deploy sophisticated mobile spyware. Through the course of our subsequent investigation we discovered that a Saudi activist based abroad had also received similar malicious messages. In its analysis of these messages, Amnesty International found connections with a network of over 600 domain names. Not only are these domain names suspicious, but they also overlap with infrastructure that had previously been identified as part of Pegasus, a sophisticated commercial exploitation and spyware platform sold by the Israel surveillance vendor, NSO Group.