It was disclosed yesterday that top European Union officials were targets of Israeli spyware. As per the report, the current European justice commissioner, Didier Reynders, and four others were targeted during the campaign.
The attempts that took place last year were discovered when Apple sent out messages to thousands of iPhone owners in November telling them they were “targeted by state-sponsored attackers.
Israeli ForcedEntry Used in the Attack
Researchers claim the attack lasted from February 2021 to September. They also alleged Apple-issued texts were sent out to users who were directly targeted by Israeli spyware, ForcedEntry.
The case is still inclusive as there was no further response as to if the campaign was successful and what data was stolen. However, the attack came following a delibration by the EU to regulate spyware vendors.
The question of who was responsible for the attack is still unanswered as the spyware vendors claim not to be responsible. Aims for cyber exploits remain uncovered as well.
More on ForcedEntry
ForcedEntry is a spyware developed by NSO, an Israeli technology firm primarily known for its proprietary spyware Pegasus, which is capable of remote zero-click surveillance of smartphones.
The program is a security exploit allegedly developed by the said firm to deploy its Pegasus spyware. The software was developed to target Apple phones that run on iOS 13 and below.
Explaining how it works, Google Project Zero team said JBIG2 doesn’t have scripting capabilities, but when combined with a vulnerability, it does have the ability to emulate circuits of arbitrary logic gates operating on arbitrary memory.
Away from NSO, Quadream also has similar security exploits and is one of the suspects of the 2021 campaign. It also denied any involvement in the campaign. It is important to note that both companies are commercial firms and sell these spywares to interested customers.
