Researchers discover attempt to infect leading Egyptian opposition politician with Predator spyware
Cybersecurity researchers say a leading Egyptian opposition politician was targeted with Predator spyware after announcing a president bid
BOSTON (AP) — A leading Egyptian opposition politician was targeted with spyware after announcing a presidential bid, security researchers reported Friday. They said Egyptian authorities were likely behind the attempted hack.
Discovery of the attempt last week by researchers at Citizen Lab and Google’s Threat Analysis Group prompted Apple to rush out operating system updates for iPhones, iPads, Mac computers and Apple Watches to patch the associated vulnerabilities.
Citizen Lab said in a blog post that recent attempts to hack former Egyptian lawmaker Ahmed Altantawy involved configuring his connection to the Vodaphone Egypt mobile network to automatically infect his devices with the Predator spyware if he visited certain websites not using the secure HTTPS protocol.
Bill Marczak, the researcher involved at the University of Toronto-based internet watchdog, declined to provide more detail on how he and Google researcher Maddie Stone discovered the spyware exploit chain, which he said was sent to Altantawy's phone via SMS and WhatsApp links from Egyptian soil.
