NOW: EU Parliament about to debate mercenary spyware. I expect it will be spicy. Follows our @citizenlab.ca revelation EU lawmaker was hacked with Pegasus while investigating spyware. LIVE HERE: www.europarl.europa.eu/plenary/en/h... Report: citizenlab.ca/research/mem...

Predict the replies without clicking through.

Forbes@forbes.com · last mo.

It’s the first time the residence has ever hit the market.

NEW: Russia cracked activist's phone with Cellebrite. Hunted for political terms @citizenlab.ca found it. Russia's own official docs confirm they did it. Andrey Pivovarov was sentenced to 4 years in prison. Thing is, #cellebrite said had cancelled Russia's contract.. 1/

Effort asymmetry is rude. There is no obligation for me to spend more time reading text you generated than it took you to prompt it.

NEW: malware developers added nuclear & biological weapons text to to their spyware. Goal? To trigger LLM safety refusals... so that their spyware wouldn't be analyzed by an AI security scanner. Cleanest practical example I can think of for why over-indexing on first order "safety" is risky. 1/

BREAKING: NSO Group caught trying to hack across #WhatsApp. Again! Defying 🇺🇸US Courts. WhatsApp disrupted the Pegasus campaign & says it violates US Federal injunction they won against NSO. Asks Federal judge to hold NSO Group in contempt. Many implications... 1/ about.fb.com/news/2026/06...

The plane with the hantavirus-ill passenger has done a lot of flying since April 25th. Airlink's ZS-YAD spends tonight in Nairobi, with scheduled return to Johannesburg tomorrow morning. I'm curious about what cleaning it might've gotten from Airlink. Here are some more deets 1/

I hope everybody kept their Zoom subscriptions.

PULITZER ALERT: to the team at @apnews.com on how US tech helped turbocharge Chinese surveillance & repression. And fueled surveillances abuses everywhere. Even at home. Took years & faced serious pushback. Tenacious journalism matters & gets us truth despite very long odds.

Zack Whittaker@zackwhittaker.com · 3mo ago

"The Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting is shared by journalists Dake Kang, Garance Burke, Byron Tau, Aniruddha Ghosal and Yael Grauer." Incredibly well deserved. @yaelwrites.com @byrontau.bsky.social @dakekang.bsky.social

"The Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting is shared by journalists Dake Kang, Garance Burke, Byron Tau, Aniruddha Ghosal and Yael Grauer." Incredibly well deserved. @yaelwrites.com @byrontau.bsky.social @dakekang.bsky.social

As many are aware by now, @accessnow.org 's annual @rightscon.org was cancelled because of pressure on the host govt Zambia 🇿🇲 by China 🇨🇳 www.rightscon.org/rc26-stateme... In their statement, @accessnow.org rightly flags this is as an example of transnational repression

A statement to our community about why RightsCon 2026 will not take place in Zambia

Our official statement to the digital rights community about why RightsCon 2026 will not take place in Zambia

rightscon.org

A manager working for a top surveillance company sold a bunch of powerful hacking tools to a Russian company. Those tools then ended up being used by the Russians. Here's what happens when hacking tools spiral out of control Watch, subscribe here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWxL...

NEW: we caught 🇨🇳Chinese hackers... again. Twist: they're hacking journalists & activists, but we suspect they're private contractors. State repression... with a profit margin. Thread + how to protect yourself 1/ By my colleagues @citizenlab.ca + @icij.org citizenlab.ca/research/how...

BREAKING: You checked the weather this morning. And you just told a surveillance company where you sleep. Meet #Webloc, used by ICE, cops & foreign govs to track 500m+ phones. No warrant required. Our @citizenlab.ca investigation + how to protect yourself 🧵/1 citizenlab.ca/research/ana...

It's a hostage situation. And we want our printers back. Would someone with tokens to burn kindly vibecode the #PrinterLiberationFront?

First, Outlook fails. Now: Houston, Bluetooth won't pair. Artemis II is NASA's most relatable mission yet.

NEW: #WhatsApp shuts down mercenary spyware op, notifies targets. Sends legal warning to Italian spyware shop #SIO. Trick is simple & time tested: govs trick people into installing a malicious version of WhatsApp. Then spy on them. 1/ By @lorenzofb.bsky.social techcrunch.com/2026/04/01/w...

Stop scrolling & watch this. Follow along. Get safer. This especially matters if you're pissing off the powerful. Thanks to @gijn.org for putting this together. www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsPY...

John Scott Railton Shares Tips and Tools to Protect Yourself Digitally

YouTube video by Global Investigative Journalism Network

youtube.com

Prolific Russian gov phishing operation now using the DarkSword exploits. Predictable: lots of threat actors have been exploit poor but with great infrastructure for social engineering. When exploits leak from governments they are best positioned to almost immediately start using them 1/

ThreatInsight@threatinsight.proofpoint.com · 4mo ago

Proofpoint has directly observed a targeted email campaign that delivers DarkSword RCE, and we attribute the messages to Russian FSB threat actor TA446 with high confidence. 🧵

NEW: French sailor reveals position of aircraft carrier with fitness app. His runs track Charles de Gaulle as it steams across the Med. Story by @lemonde.fr 1/ www.lemonde.fr/internationa...

NEW: foreign hacker compromised Epstein files held by #FBI "included combing through certain files pertaining to the Epstein investigation” Source describes it as cybercriminal. Previously all we knew was: there was some sort of breach. 1/ By @raphae.li www.reuters.com/world/us/for...

You used Pokemon Go. You were not the customer. You were the product. By @willdouglasheaven.bsky.social www.technologyreview.com/2026/03/10/1...

6/ In 2022 I warned Congress that commercially-developed exploits would leak. I testified to House Intelligence that the tech would go to adversaries and criminal organizations. That has now happened with #Coruna. And as the commercial offensive industry grows, it will happen again.

BREAKING: powerful iPhone hacking tools used by Chinese criminals originated from US defense giant L3 Harris. Their zero-click exploits went to Russian spies too. Unbelievable harm to our collective security. Scoop: @lorenzofb.bsky.social, here's why it matters 1/ techcrunch.com/2026/03/09/a...

The #FCC is reviewing a proposal for space mirrors to blast sunlight at the earth at night. Sounds awful. Anyone who that been to the far north or tried to sleep under lights knows how disorienting 24h of light is. Everybody gets insomnia. It's also an ecological disaster machinery 1/

We're about to see a new surveillance trap: "Plaid for AI" This will look like slick middleware that seamlessly hooks CRMs to Claude, gmail to GPT-5 etc, etc. UX will be great & founders well-meaning. Then the VCs ask: what else can we do with this sick tokenflow data? 1/

NEW: US just sanctioned a network of exploit brokers trafficking in stolen US hacking tools First-ever use of #PIPA (Protecting American Intellectual Property Act) by Treasury. Here's the wild backstory of how Operation Zero got US-taxpayer funded exploits. 1/

Cellebrite taking a page out of the NSO Group playbook. Denialism is a bad look for a company that tries to frame itself as more ethical than notorious spyware companies. And a good sign that there are deeper issues with the company.

Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai@lorenzofb.bsky.social · 6mo ago

NEW: Last year, Cellebrite stopped Serbia from using its tools after allegations that local police had abused them to hack into the phone of a journalist. Now there are similar allegations in Kenya and Jordan, and Cellebrite is taking an entirely different approach.

UPDATE: Paragon calls OPSEC fail a tiny price to pay for "female empowerment." Peak cringe. And nonsense. Entire world learned from this pic that their spyware is more invasive than previously known. 1/

John Scott-Railton@jsrailton.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Epic OPSEC fail by Paragon exposing Graphite spyware capabilities. Annotated pic from what we know. Please help me figure out the other apps in in this pic that the spyware can access: #WhatsApp #Telegram #Signal ? #Line? ? #Snapchat? #TikTok? 1/

Aleksei Navalny was most likely poisoned by a toxin found in a South American frog, five European countries said Saturday, making the most concrete Western accusation yet that Russia’s leading opposition figure was murdered by his government in a prison two years ago. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/14/w...