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spyware
'Intellexa Leaks' Reveal Wider Reach of Predator Spyware
“This investigation provides one of the clearest and most damning views yet into Intellexa’s internal operations and technology," said Amnesty International Security Lab technologist Jurre van Bergen.
Dec 04, 2025
Highly invasive spyware from consortium led by a former senior Israeli intelligence official and sanctioned by the US government is still being used to target people in multiple countries, a joint investigation published Thursday revealed.
Inside Story in Greece, Haaretz in Israel, Swiss-based WAV Research Collective, and Amnesty International collaborated on the investigation into Intellexa Consortium, maker of Predator commercial spyware. The "Intellexa Leaks" show that clients in Pakistan—and likely also in other countries—are using Predator to spy on people, including a featured Pakistani human rights lawyer.
“This investigation provides one of the clearest and most damning views yet into Intellexa’s internal operations and technology," said Amnesty International Security Lab technologist Jurre van Bergen.
🚨Intellexa Leaks:"Among the most startling findings is evidence that—at the time of the leaked training videos—Intellexa retained the capability to remotely access Predator customer systems, even those physically located on the premises of its govt customers."securitylab.amnesty.org/latest/2025/...
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— Vas Panagiotopoulos (@vaspanagiotopoulos.com) December 3, 2025 at 9:07 PM
Predator works by sending malicious links to a targeted phone or other hardware. When the victim clicks the link, the spyware infects and provide access to the targeted device, including its encrypted instant messages on applications such as Signal and WhatsApp, as well as stored passwords, emails, contact lists, call logs, microphones, audio recordings, and more. The spyware then uploads gleaned data to a Predator back-end server.
The new investigation also revealed that in addition to the aforementioned "one-click" attacks, Intellexa has developed "zero-click" capabilities in which devices are infected via malicious advertising.
In March 2024, the US Treasury Department sanctioned two people and five entities associated with Intellexa for their alleged role "in developing, operating, and distributing commercial spyware technology used to target Americans, including US government officials, journalists, and policy experts."
"The proliferation of commercial spyware poses distinct and growing security risks to the United States and has been misused by foreign actors to enable human rights abuses and the targeting of dissidents around the world for repression and reprisal," the department said at the time.
Those sanctioned include Intellexa, its founder Tal Jonathan Dilian—a former chief commander of the Israel Defense Forces' top-secret Technological Unit—his wife and business partner Sara Aleksandra Fayssal Hamou; and three companies within the Intellexa Consortium based in North Macedonia, Hungary, and Ireland.
In September 2024, Treasury sanctioned five more people and one more entity associated with the Intellexa Consortium, including Felix Bitzios, owner of an Intellexa consortium company accused of selling Predator to an unnamed foreign government, for alleged activities likely posing "a significant threat to the national security, foreign policy, or economic health or financial stability of the United States."
The Intellexa Leaks reveal that new consortium employees were trained using a video demonstrating Predator capabilities on live clients. raising serious questions regarding clients' understanding of or consent to such access.
"The fact that, at least in some cases, Intellexa appears to have retained the capability to remotely access Predator customer logs—allowing company staff to see details of surveillance operations and targeted individuals raises questions about its own human rights due diligence processes," said van Bergen.
"If a mercenary spyware company is found to be directly involved in the operation of its product, then by human rights standards, it could potentially leave them open to claims of liability in cases of misuse and if any human rights abuses are caused by the use of spyware," he added.
Dilian, Hamou, Bitzios, and Giannis Lavranos—whose company Krikel purchased Predator spyware—are currently on trial in Greece for allegedly violating the privacy of Greek journalist Thanasis Koukakis and Artemis Seaford, a Greek-American woman who worked for tech giant Meta. Dilian denies any wrongdoing or involvement in the case.
Earlier this week, former Intellexa pre-sale engineer Panagiotis Koutsios testified about traveling to countries including Colombia, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Mexico, Mongolia, the United Kingdom, and Uzbekistan, where he pitched Predator to public, intelligence, and state security agencies.
The new joint investigation follows Amnesty International's "Predator Files," a 2023 report detailing "how a suite of highly invasive surveillance technologies supplied by the Intellexa alliance is being sold and transferred around the world with impunity."
The Predator case has drawn comparisons with Pegasus, the zero-click spyware made by the Israeli firm NSO Group that has been used by governments, spy agencies, and others to invade the privacy of targeted world leaders, political opponents, dissidents, journalists, and others.
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Amnesty Details 'Shocking' Allegations of India Targeting Reporters With Pegasus Spyware
"Increasingly, journalists in India face the threat of unlawful surveillance simply for doing their jobs," said one advocate.
Dec 28, 2023
Amnesty International on Thursday demanded transparency from the Indian government regarding its contracts with surveillance companies, including the Israeli firm NSO Group, after the rights organization joined The Washington Post in publishing what it called "shocking new details" about the use of spyware to target journalists in India.
Amnesty's Security Lab revealed that a round of "state-sponsored attacker" notifications that were sent to Apple customers in October by the tech company went to more than 20 Indian journalists including Siddharth Varadarajan, founding editor of The Wire, and Anand Mangnale, South Asia editor at the Organized Crime and Corruption Report Project (OCCRP).
The Security Lab ran a forensic analysis of the two reporters' devices and found evidence that the NSO Group's highly invasive Pegasus spyware, which is capable of eavesdropping on phone calls and harvesting data, had been installed on phones owned by Varadarajan and Mangnale.
In Mangnale's case, the journalist appeared to have received a "zero-click exploit" via iMessage on August 23, allowing the individual or group who sent it to covertly install Pegasus spyware on his phone without requiring Mangnale to take any action, such as clicking a link.
At the time of the attempted attack, said Amnesty, Mangnale was working on a story about alleged stock manipulation by a major Indian multinational firm with ties to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The journalist told Agence France Presse that his phone was targeted "within hours" of his sending interview questions to the company.
The timing of the attack—and the fact that NSO Group has said it only licenses Pegasus to governments and security agencies—was "a hell of a coincidence," Mangnale said.
"Targeting journalists solely for doing their work amounts to an unlawful attack on their privacy and violates their right to freedom of expression," said Donncha Ó Cearbhaill, head of Amnesty's Security Lab. "All states, including India, have an obligation to protect human rights by protecting people from unlawful surveillance."
The Indian government was previously accused of targeting journalists, opposition politicians, and activists with Pegasus in 2021, when leaked documents showed the spyware had attacked more than 1,000 phone numbers.
India has fallen 21 spots to 161 out of 180 countries in Reporters Without Borders' World Press Freedom Index since Modi took office in 2014. In addition to the alleged use of spyware by the government, journalists have been arrested and detained while covering anti-government protests, and reporters have been targeted by coordinated social media campaigns inciting hatred and violence.
Varadarajan was the subject of an earlier report by Amnesty, which documented how he had previously been targeted by Pegasus spyware in 2018.
This past October the same email address used in the Pegasus attack on Mangnale was identified on Varadarajan's phone, confirming he was targeted again.
Varadarajan told The Washington Post that at the time of the most recent covert spyware installation, he had been leading public opposition to the detention of a news publisher in New Delhi.
"Our latest findings show that increasingly, journalists in India face the threat of unlawful surveillance simply for doing their jobs, alongside other tools of repression including imprisonment under draconian laws, smear campaigns, harassment, and intimidation," said Ó Cearbhaill.
The group called for the Indian Supreme Court to immediately release the findings of a technical committee report on Pegasus, which was completed in 2022 but has still not been made public.
"Despite repeated revelations," said Ó Cearbhaill, "there has been a shameful lack of accountability about the use of Pegasus spyware in India which only intensifies the sense of impunity over these human rights violations."
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Amnesty Warns of UAE Surveillance During UN Climate Summit
"It is no secret that targeted digital surveillance has long been weaponized in the United Arab Emirates to crush dissent and stifle freedom of expression," said one campaigner.
Nov 15, 2023
With just two weeks until the next United Nations climate summit, Amnesty International on Wednesday expressed concerns about authorities in the United Arab Emirates using digital surveillance to target COP28 attendees and UAE residents alike.
"It is no secret that targeted digital surveillance has long been weaponized in the United Arab Emirates to crush dissent and stifle freedom of expression," said Rebecca White, a campaigner with Amnesty's Disrupting Surveillance Team, in a statement.
"Prior to his arrest in 2017, human rights defender Ahmed Mansoor faced a string of cyberattacks facilitated by mercenary surveillance companies," she noted. "Known as 'the last human rights defender' in the UAE, Mansoor, who openly criticized the authorities, has been languishing in an Emirati prison for over six years."
In recent months, Amnesty and other groups have called on U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to pressure the UAE to "immediately and unconditionally release" Mansoor and other imprisoned human rights advocates before COP28. Amnesty has also joined other organizations in urging leaders of countries participating in the summit to address the host nation's human rights record and "destructive" climate policies amid a worsening global emergency.
"Amnesty International fears that human rights defenders and other members of civil society in the UAE may continue to be targeted with spyware, including those attending COP28," White said Wednesday. "As hosts of the conference, the UAE has pledged to offer a platform for activists' voices, yet this will not be possible unless human rights, including the rights to privacy and peaceful assembly, are respected."
The pledge she referenced was signed in August by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Executive Secretary Simon Stiell and the COP28 president-designate, Sultan bin Ahmed Al Jaber, who is also an oil executive.
Heba Morayef, Amnesty's regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, said at the time, "The fact that the hosts of this crucial climate meeting felt the need to highlight that some form of free assembly and expression will be allowed during COP28 serves only to highlight the normally restrictive human rights environment in the United Arab Emirates and the severe limits it places on the rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly."
White stressed Wednesday that "the UAE authorities must not engage in unlawful electronic surveillance of conference participants as well as all Emirati nationals and residents. They must also allow COP28 attendees to download privacy-respecting international communications applications like Signal in the UAE to ensure they can use safe, encrypted means of communication."
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