Sanctioned spyware maker Intellexa had direct access to government espionage victims, researchers say

Summary

Spyware maker Intellexa had remote access to some of its government customers’ surveillance systems, giving company staffers the ability to see the personal data of people whose phones had been hacked with its Predator spyware, according to new evidence published by Amnesty International. On Thursday, Amnesty and a coalition of media partners, including Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Greek news site Inside Story, and Swiss outlet Inside IT, published a series of reports based on leaked material from Intellexa, including internal company documents, sales and marketing material, and training videos. Perhaps the most striking revelation is that people working at Intellexa could allegedly remotely access the surveillance systems of at least some of its customers via TeamViewer, an off-the-shelf tool that allows users to connect to other computers over the internet. The remote access is shown in a leaked training video revealing privileged parts of the Predator spyware system, including its dashboard, as well as the “storage system containing photos, messages and all other surveillance data gathered from victims of the Predator spyware,” Amnesty wrote in its report. (Amnesty published screenshots taken from the video, but not the full video.) The nonprofit researchers wrote that the leaked video shows apparent “live” Predator infection attempts “against real targets,” based on detailed information “from at least one infection attempt against a target in Kazakhstan.” The video contained the infection URL, the target’s IP address, and the software versions of the target’s phone. A screenshot of the dashboard of an Intellexa customer surveillance system, which shows the types of sensitive personal data of hacked targets that customers and Intellexa support staff may have access to. Image Credits:Amnesty International Companies that sell spyware to government agencies, such as NSO Group and the now-defunct Hacking Team, have long maintained that they never have access to the dat...