Microsoft analyzes a threat group tracked as DEV-0196, the actor’s iOS malware “KingsPawn”, and their link to an Israel-based private sector offensive actor (PSOA) known as QuaDream, which reportedly sells a suite of exploits, malware, and infrastructure called REIGN, that’s designed to exfiltrate data from mobile devices.

At least five civil society victims of QuaDream’s spyware and exploits were identified in North America, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. Victims include journalists, political opposition figures, and an NGO worker. Traces of a suspected iOS 14 zero-click exploit used to deploy QuaDream’s spyware.

Researchers found malware developed by QuaDream, a little-known government spyware maker, which was used against journalists and politicians.

Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG) tracks actors involved in information operations (IO), government backed attacks and financially motivated abuse. For years, TAG has been tracking the activities of commercial spyware vendors to protect users. Today, we actively track more than 30 vendors with varying levels of sophistication and public exposure selling exploits or surveillance capabilities to government backed actors. These vendors are enabling the proliferation of dangerous hacking tools, arming governments that would not be able to develop these capabilities in-house. While use of surveillance technologies may be legal under national or international laws, they are often found to be used by governments to target dissidents, journalists, human rights workers and opposition party politicians.

A U.S. and Greek national who worked on Meta’s security and trust team while based in Greece was placed under a yearlong wiretap by the Greek national intelligence service and hacked with a powerful cyberespionage tool, according to documents obtained by The New York Times and officials with knowledge of the case.

Haaretz reveals NFV Systems’ surveillance tools; firm under investigation by secretive Israeli body for skirting arms export controls, in case that may ‘damage national security’