US Citizen Hacked by Spyware
The New York Times is reporting that a US citizen’s phone was hacked by Predator spyware.
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.
The disclosure is the first known case of an American citizen being targeted in a European Union country by the advanced snooping technology, the use of which has been the subject of a widening scandal in Greece. It demonstrates that the illicit use of spyware is spreading beyond use by authoritarian governments against opposition figures and journalists, and has begun to creep into European democracies, even ensnaring a foreign national working for a major global corporation.
The simultaneous tapping of the target’s phone by the national intelligence service and the way she was hacked indicate that the spy service and whoever implanted the spyware, known as Predator, were working hand in hand.
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Winter • March 21, 2023 9:11 AM
It is always funny that a crime is only Newsworthy in some circles when the victim is an American.
That said, I think we should use these examples in a response to any proposed weakening of the use of encryption.
We can tell “law enforcement” that:
If you are not willing to keep us safe against unlawful surveillance and digital crimes, preventing us from protecting ourselves makes you complicit in the crime