Al Jazeera cyber attack linked to Israeli spyware

ISRAELI spyware may be increasingly deployed by Middle East governments following recent normalisation agreements with Israel, a researcher who tracks surveillance firms has said after his group claimed to have uncovered hacks of dozens of Al Jazeera journalists.

Malware probably created by the Israeli spy tech company NSO Group targeted 36 reporters from the Qatari state-owned broadcaster and a London-based journalist for another Qatari- owned network, according to a report published on Sunday by researchers at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab.

The cyber attack was notable for using “zero- click” software, which infected targeted mobile phones without any i nteraction from the user, allowing the operatives to access all information on the device and to eavesdrop on conversations.

Almost all iphone devices not operating Apple’s latest IOS 14 version are believed to be vulnerable to the code.

The report concluded with “medium confidence” that the governments of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, both users of NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware, were behind the attacks. With Bahrain and the UAE recently establishing diplomatic relations with Israel, and Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, reportedly secretly visiting Saudi Arabia to meet Mohammed bin Salman, the country’s crown prince, the use of Israeli spyware in the region may now accelerate.

Bill Marczak, a senior researcher at Citizen Lab, told the Associated Press that clients for similar Israeli software could include a “much wider range of government agencies and customers across the Gulf ”.

There is no suggestion that NSO Group was complicit in the hack and it cast doubt on the Citizen Lab report, saying “not everything associated to us is, in reality, a use of our technology”.

The Saudi and UAE governments did not respond to requests for comment, but the two countries have long called for the closing of Al Jazeera and since June 2017 have enforced a diplomatic and economic blockade on Qatar, accusing Doha of supporting terrorism. Qatar rejects the claims

The two countries have also made shutting down the channel a core precondition for restoring relations.