Amnesty International

Google fixes two Android zero-day bugs actively exploited by hackers

On Monday, Google released an update for Android that fixes two zero-day flaws that “may be under limited, targeted exploitation,” as the company put it. That means Google is aware that hackers have been and may still be using the bugs to compromise Android devices in real world scenarios.  One of the two now-fixed zero-days, […]

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Again and again, NSO Group’s customers keep getting their spyware operations caught

On Thursday, Amnesty International published a new report detailing attempted hacks against two Serbian journalists, allegedly carried out with NSO Group’s spyware Pegasus.  The two journalists, who work for the Serbia-based Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN), received suspicious text messages including a link — basically a phishing attack, according to the nonprofit. In one case, Amnesty

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Researchers uncover unknown Android flaws used to hack into a student’s phone

Amnesty International said that Google fixed previously unknown flaws in Android that allowed authorities to unlock phones using forensic tools. On Friday, Amnesty International published a report detailing a chain of three zero-day vulnerabilities developed by phone-unlocking company Cellebrite, which its researchers found after investigating the hack of a student protester’s phone in Serbia. The

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Cellebrite suspends Serbia as customer after claims police used firm’s tech to plant spyware

Cellebrite announced on Tuesday that it stopped Serbia from using its technology, following allegations that Serbian police and intelligence used Cellebrite’s technology to unlock the phones of a journalist and an activist, and then plant spyware.  In December 2024, Amnesty International published a report that accused Serbian police of using Cellebrite’s forensics tools to hack

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Serbian police used Cellebrite to unlock, then plant spyware, on a journalist’s phone

This year, a Serbian journalist and an activist had their phones hacked by local authorities using a cellphone-unlocking device made by forensic tool maker Cellebrite. The authorities’ goal was not only to unlock the phones to access their personal data, as Cellebrite allows, but also to install spyware to enable further surveillance, according to a

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Poland arrests former spy chief in Pegasus spyware probe

For the last few years, the Polish government under Donald Tusk has been investigating the use — and alleged abuse — of Pegasus phone spyware by the previous government.  On Monday, the former head of Poland’s internal security agency Piotr Pogonowski was arrested and forcibly taken to testify before parliament, as part of the current

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Hackers targeted Android users by exploiting zero-day bug in Qualcomm chips

On Monday, chipmaker Qualcomm confirmed that hackers exploited a zero-day — meaning a security flaw that was unknown to the hardware maker when it was abused — in dozens of its chipsets found in popular Android devices. The zero-day vulnerability, officially designated CVE-2024-43047, “may be under limited, targeted exploitation,” according to Qualcomm, citing unspecified “indications”

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