Leading Saudi activist Lejin al-Hazloul has called on Citizen Lab to investigate her cell phone hacking, prompting the revelation of Israeli spyware malware attacks on thousands of victims around the world.
According to Pak Sahafat News Agency International Group, an investigation by a Western news agency revealed that Saudi espionage against prominent Saudi activist Lejin al-Hazloul was a direct factor in exposing Israeli spyware cyber-attacks against thousands of people around the world.
According to Reuters, it all started with a software flaw in Lejin al-Hazloul‘s mobile phone.
An unusual bug in the “intelligence” spyware software has helped Lajin al-Hazlul and security experts uncover a body of evidence that shows that Israeli spy software is used to spy on thousands used all over the world.
The story was that a mysterious fake image file on Lejin al-Hazloul’s mobile phone, which was mistakenly left by the Pegasus malware, caught the attention of security researchers.
Lajin al-Hazloul is one of Saudi Arabia’s most prominent activists, who was arrested and sentenced to prison after launching a campaign to end the ban on women driving in the country. She was released from Al-Saud prison in February 2021 after nearly three years in prison.
Immediately after her release, she received an email from Google warning her that hackers had tried to hack into her Gmail account.
Three people close to Al-Hazloul told Reuters that Fearing that her cell phone had been hacked, the Saudi activist called the Canadian private company Citizen Lab and asked them to check her cell phone.
Citizen Lab researcher Bill Markzack made an “unprecedented discovery” after six months of searching. A flaw in the spyware that was embedded in al-Hazloul’s mobile phone left a copy of the malicious file instead of deleting her trace after hacking her phone messages.
According to Bill Markzak, the code provided direct evidence that Pegasus was a spy tool.
“Markzak said: Then the rules of the game changed. We discovered something that the spies thought was unattainable.
The discovery prompted Apple to report thousands of hacking victims around the world.
The findings of Citizen Lab and Lejin al-Hazloul were the basis of Apple’s November 2021 lawsuit against the human rights group. The issue also resonated in Washington after US officials discovered that Pegasus malware had been used to spy on them.
Read more: The most famous female prisoner in Saudi Arabia, Lejin al-Hazloul, has been released: https://www.paksahafat.com/en/?p=2314
A Saudi court has issued a verdict for “Lajin al-Hazlul”: https://www.paksahafat.com/en/?p=1291
The use of spyware has grown exponentially in recent years, with many authoritarian governments around the world purchasing phone hacking software to gain digital surveillance against dissidents and critics.
Over the past year, a wealth of information leaked by a number of journalists and activists has linked espionage companies to human rights abuses that have led to further scrutiny of NSO and its counterparts.
Researchers say that the case discovered from the mobile phone of Lejin al-Hazloul was the first case that suggested a new form of cyber espionage.
The type of spyware detected on the iPhone is known as “zero-click”, meaning that the user’s phone can be infected without clicking on the malicious link.
Al-Hadhul had good reason to doubt, because this was not the first time she had been spied on by the Al-Saud regime.
Comprehensive research of more than 17 news organizations showed that the Pegasus spy software, made by the Israeli technology company NSO, has been used to spy on the cell phones of hundreds of journalists, political and social activists, as well as politicians around the world.
The countries that have made the most use of this software include Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Hungary, India, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Morocco, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
Researchers were able to identify more than a thousand people through research and interviews on four continents: Several members of the Arab royal family, at least 65 business executives, 85 human rights activists, 189 journalists and more than 600 politicians and government officials, were among those whose phones were hacked by Pegasus software.
Pegasus’s Israeli spy program was first revealed in 2016; the cell phone of “Emirati activist” Ahmad Mansour was hacked by a series of highly advanced spyware programs, after which Mansour was arrested and imprisoned.
The Zionist company has announced that The main purpose of the program is to fight what is called terrorism, but the victims targeted – according to British security expert Jake Moore – were human rights activists, journalists, politicians and some wealthy people, so whoever is behind the program , Targets specific people.