John Scott-Railton Profile picture
Oct 2, 2022 10 tweets 10 min read Read on X
BREAKING: journalists & human rights defenders hacked with #Pegasus in 🇲🇽#Mexico.

Years *after* spyware scandals & new President's promise that abuses were over.

THREAD 1/

Report by @R3Dmx ejercitoespia.r3d.mx
We @citizenlab did forensic validation: citizenlab.ca/2022/10/new-pe… Key Takeaways Mexican digital rights organization R3D (Red eOur technical validation of forensic artifacts collected fro
2/ Per @R3Dmx, #Pegasus victims were infected while working on:

❌Connections between Los Zetas Cartel & Mexican Army
❌Official misconduct in investigations into #Ayotzinapa forced disappearances
❌Human rights violations by Mexican Armed Forces.

Chilling. Ricardo Raphael  Raphael, a prominent journalist and author Raymundo Ramos Vázquez  Ramos has spent years documenting h
3/ Mexico was first rocked by #Pegasus scandals in 2017 under President @EPN.

We @citizenlab, @R3Dmx @socialtic & @article19org had found dozens of abuse cases.

When Pres. @lopezobrador_ took office, he promised hacking abuses were a thing of the past...
4 Mexico's #Pegasus scandals didn't stop.

The #PegasusProject also revealed that scores in the circle of @lopezobrador_ had been potentially selected for targeting while @EPN was in office.

Including now-President AMLO's wife & children. In 2017, the Citizen Lab, along with partners R3D, SocialTic
5/ Mexico has been one of the *most* notorious cases of #Pegasus spyware abuses.

NSO Group has has been confronted about this. For years.

Mexico's new president, touched himself by spyware abuses prior to entering office... had promised it was over.

Yet here we are.
6/ Yet again, journalists & human rights defenders of intense interest to the Mexican government got hacked.

Chillingly, some of their work was clearly of intense interest to cartels, too.

#Mexico has seen *half a decade* of abuses like this. Need for an Independent Investigation These latest cases, wh
7/ I urge you to read @R3Dmx's full report. Here's their thread on the cases.
8/ Another key find via @R3Dmx: Mexico did recent business with companies linked to prior #Pegasus contracts👇👇

Despite making strenuous efforts to deny any such business.
9/ A key detail: while previous Pegasus cases @citizenlab investigated in #Mexico involved finding SMS messages and 1-click attacks... these latest cases were zero-click attacks.

No action was required on the part of the victims to be infected.
10/ Of course NSO has a response that is not serious.

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More from @jsrailton

May 6
BREAKING: jury awards massive $167 million in punitive damages against spyware company NSO Group.

Precedent-setting win against the notorious #Pegasus spyware maker.

Congratulations to @WhatsApp on sticking this case through since 2019. Some thoughts 1/
2/ After years of every trick & delay tactic it only took a California jury one days deliberation to the heart of the matter:

NSO makes millions hacking mostly-🇺🇸American tech companies... so that dictators can hack dissidents.

Their conduct deserved to be punished.
3/ NSO Group emerges from the trial severely damaged.

The verdict ($167,256,000 punitive, $440K+ compensatory) is big enough to make your eyes water.

The case is ALSO a huge blow to NSO's secrecy, with their business splashed all over a courtroom.

This will scare customers...
Read 14 tweets
May 1
Friends don't let friends get their eyeballs scanned to buy a coffee.

Sam Altman's Orwellian "Tools for Humanity" says this dystopia machine could help distinguish between #AI agents & humans... or verify at Point of Sale..or..?

Looks to me like a big biometric data grab 1/ Image
2/ Surely they didn't just start with the idea of invasively harvesting eyeball scans...and then look around for potential justifications.

And then add in some AI hype.

Right? Image
3/ Throwback to Tools for Humanity's previous (but non-portable, guys!) eye-scanning thing: WorldCoin.

Remember that? A global biometric data grab rife with documented exploitation in Africa & Latin America.

Still not clear what real value it delivered to the ppl who gave up their biometrics.Image
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Read 4 tweets
Apr 28
Fear is dictatorship glue.

You can't imprison everyone with a dissenting thought.

Or inconvenient factual observation.

But fear teaches self censorship. It's a scalable system of control.

The autocrat's challenge is to keep the fear going. 1/ A detention center’s interrogation rooms — Untersuchungshaftanstalt Hohenschönhausen, Vernehmungstrakt (2004) (© Daniel & Geo Fuchs) Image source: https://hyperallergic.com/151019/mundane-horror-in-abandoned-stasi-spaces/
2/ In the 20th century, keeping fear alive required massive human investment.

Informants... archives...exemplary punishments... information control.

Looked like a linear scale.

A post-cold war school of thought said: once everyone is connected, these systems won't work. Hohenschönhausen investigation prison: monitoring room Daniel & Geo Fuchs  Via https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/stasi-secret-rooms-communist-east-germanys-eerie-interrogation-cells-haunted-prisons-1467734
BStU Zentralarchiv Berlin archives (2004) (© Daniel & Geo Fuchs)  URL: https://hyperallergic.com/151019/mundane-horror-in-abandoned-stasi-spaces/
"There are several images of staged Stasi arrests carried out for training purposes. Dissidents, in some case already serving long prison terms, were sometimes made to re-enact their own arrest for the camera.  " Simon Menner BSTU Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-23986385
3/ But tech isn't, by nature, a dictatorship antidote.

It can be an expedient.

Just ask China.

In 20 years the CCP empirically developed technologies & private sector partnerships for scaling fear and self censorship to >1.4 billion ppl.

Log scale. A display shows surveillance technology capable of analyzing body motion for specific actions like fighting, theft or fall during Security China 2018 in Beijing, China, Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2018.  Photo/Ng Han Guan
Surveillance cameras are mounted on a post at Tiananmen Square as snow falls in Beijing, China, on Thursday, Feb. 14, 2019. Qilai Shen  https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/15/huawei-ai-firms-filed-to-patent-tech-that-could-identify-uighurs-report-says.html
Read 6 tweets
Mar 19
🚨NEW REPORT: first forensic confirmation of #Paragon mercenary spyware infections in #Italy...

Known targets: Activists & journalists.

We also found deployments around the world. Including ...Canada?

And a lot more... Thread on our @citizenlab investigation 1/Image
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2/ So #Paragon makes zero-click spyware marketed as better than NSO's Pegasus...

Harder to find...

...And more ethical too!

This caught our attention @citizenlab & we were skeptical.

By @iblametom forbes.com/sites/thomasbr…Image
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3/ We got a tip about a single bit of #Paragon infrastructure & my brilliant colleague @billmarczak developed a technique to fingerprint some of the mercenary spyware infrastructure (both victim-facing & customer side) globally.

So much for invisibility.

What we found startled us.

citizenlab.ca/2025/03/a-firs…Image
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Read 18 tweets
Feb 6
BREAKING: #Paragon reportedly terminates spyware contract with #Italy.

Right on heels of reported targeting of journalist & activists in Italy.

BIG DEAL: puts Italian government in the hot seat, since they denied knowing about it only hours ago.👇
Image
2/ Read this slowly.

The implication is clear: the Italian government was a #Paragon customer & had their contract terminated...

Even as @GiorgiaMeloni's office was issuing denials.

Likely to make the scandal worse.

Exceptional reporting from The Guardian
theguardian.com/technology/202…Image
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3/ Big picture:

#Paragon's carefully constructed image of being a clean mercenary spyware company that wasn't susceptible to abuses has been replaced by a more familiar tale of...

Abuses...

And #Italy is now saddled with an unfolding crisis around spyware abuse.
Read 7 tweets
Feb 1
NEW: @WhatsApp says Israeli mercenary spyware company #Paragon targeted scores of users around world.

The infection happened with no interaction. No link to click or attachment to open.

This is called a "zero-click" attack.

WA says targets included journalists & members of civil society.

They dismantled the attack vector & notified users.

Good.

We at @citizenlab shared some info instrumental to their investigation of the vector.

This is a BIG deal. Here's why 1/Image
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2/ For a few years the only source of information about #Paragon... has been Paragon.

They marketed themselves as the anti-NSO.

(NSO makes the notorious #Pegasus spyware)

It's easier to frame yourself as virtuous in the spyware game if nobody can look over your shoulder.

By @iblametom
forbes.com/sites/thomasbr…

By @RonanFarrow
newyorker.com/magazine/2022/…Image
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3/ Late last year, partly on the strength of their promised virtue #Paragon seemed closer than ever to landing the industrys juiciest of prices.

Market access into the USA.

This is the goal of a lot of spyware companies & their investors...

At the time, there simply were no pesky reports on Paragon that showed anything might be other than rosy.

Story @criticalvas
wired.com/story/ice-para…Image
Read 12 tweets

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