{"id":31193,"date":"2021-12-21T15:23:56","date_gmt":"2021-12-21T15:23:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/media.am\/?p=31193"},"modified":"2022-01-03T20:56:50","modified_gmt":"2022-01-03T20:56:50","slug":"armenia-among-spyware-users","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/newsroom\/2021\/12\/21\/31193\/","title":{"rendered":"Armenia Among Spyware Users"},"content":{"rendered":"

On December 16, <\/span>Meta<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>The CitizenLab<\/span><\/a> published a joint investigation, in which Armenia appeared for the first time as a state among countries using spyware. Armenia is believed to have used the software Cytrox’s Predator, which targets people to collect data, manipulate it, and disable their devices and Internet accounts.<\/span><\/p>\n

Media researcher Samvel Martirosyan <\/span>wrote<\/span><\/a> that Armenia used spyware to infect and spy on people’s phones inside the country. Information security specialist Ruben Martirosyan <\/span>said<\/span><\/a> that he received messages from two people targeted by Cytrox.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Cyber mercenaries<\/b><\/p>\n

Spyware operates mainly in the interests of governments, claiming that only criminals and terrorists are targeted. A similar program is Predator used in Armenia, which is a product of the Cytrox company.<\/span><\/p>\n

Founded in<\/span><\/a> 2017, Cytrox <\/span>started<\/span><\/a> its activities as a northern Macedonian startup. According to the documents of the United Registry, Cytrox also has its representative offices in Israel and Hungary.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The Cytrox logo on a North Macedonian job posting <\/span>site<\/span><\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

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The company description section of <\/span>Crunchbase<\/span><\/a> states that they offer governments “operational cyber solutions” and collect information from devices and cloud systems. <\/span>Pitchbook<\/span><\/a> describes the technology as “cyber intelligence systems designed to offer security to the government.”<\/span><\/p>\n

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The Targets<\/b><\/p>\n

A months-long investigation by Meta and The CitizenLab has <\/span>revealed<\/span><\/a> that despite claims by the spyware company that their services are being used to track down potential criminals, the target is much wider. Journalists, members of religious minorities, critics of authoritarian regimes, members of the opposition family and human rights activists have been victims of spyware.<\/span><\/p>\n

Similar cases have been reported in Egypt when the accounts of deported politician Ayman Nuri and the host of a popular news show (who prefers to remain anonymous) were hacked by Predator. By the way, Ayman Nuri’s phone was spied on by both Cytrox Predator and NSO Group’s Pegasus spy program, which were monitored by government customers in different countries.<\/span><\/p>\n

The attacks of the two targets took place in June 2021. The program was able to infect the latest version 14.6 of Apple’s iOS system with a one-click link sent via WhatsApp.<\/span><\/p>\n

The team of investigators scanned the web servers of the Predator spy program and found its possible client countries. Among them, besides Armenia and Egypt, Greece, Indonesia, Madagascar, Oman, Saudi Arabia and Serbia.<\/span><\/p>\n

A global spyware industry exists.<\/b><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Meta notes in its publication that the attention to the NSO company created by the Pegasus spy system has recently increased. And although <\/span>they sued<\/span><\/a> the NSO in 2019 for illegal activities in their networks, it is, unfortunately, only one part of the global spyware industry.<\/span><\/p>\n

Meta has stopped 7 similar companies in about 100 countries, each of which carries out one or more stages of espionage.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The 3 stages of espionage are:<\/span><\/p>\n