Undercover agents target cybersecurity watchdog

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/apnewsbreak-undercover-agents-target-cybersecurity-watchdog-2/

By Raphael Satter
The Associated Press
Updated January 28, 2019

NEW YORK (AP) -- The researchers who reported that Israeli software was used to 
spy on Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi's inner circle before his 
gruesome death are being targeted in turn by international undercover 
operatives, The Associated Press has found.

Twice in the past two months, men masquerading as socially conscious investors 
have lured members of the Citizen Lab internet watchdog group to meetings at 
luxury hotels to quiz them for hours about their work exposing Israeli 
surveillance and the details of their personal lives. In both cases, the 
researchers believe they were secretly recorded.

Citizen Lab Director Ron Deibert described the stunts as "a new low."

"We condemn these sinister, underhanded activities in the strongest possible 
terms," he said in a statement Friday. "Such a deceitful attack on an academic 
group like the Citizen Lab is an attack on academic freedom everywhere."

Who these operatives are working for remains a riddle, but their tactics recall 
those of private investigators who assume elaborate false identities to gather 
intelligence or compromising material on critics of powerful figures in 
government or business.

Citizen Lab, based out of the Munk School at the University of Toronto, has for 
years played a leading role in exposing state-backed hackers operating in 
places as far afield as Tibet, Ethiopia and Syria. Lately the group has drawn 
attention for its repeated exposés of an Israeli surveillance software vendor 
called the NSO Group, a firm whose wares have been used by governments to 
target journalists in Mexico, opposition figures in Panama and human rights 
activists in the Middle East.

[...]

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