Stalked in real time: Intellexa, the Israeli Predator in your pocket

 

Leaked training videos and new evidence expose Intellexa as more than just a rogue surveillance company. The Israeli firm stands as a pillar of Tel Aviv's global cyberwarfare infrastructure, infiltrating phones worldwide through 'zero-click' methods, ad-based infections, and covert partnerships with authoritarian governments.

New research published by Amnesty International exposes key operations of Intellexa, an Israeli-linked spyware consortium responsible for mass surveillance and human rights violations across multiple continents. This includes ‘Predator,’ a highly invasive tool that hijacks smartphones to exfiltrate everything from camera feeds to encrypted chats, GPS locations, and emails. It is just the latest example of an Israeli-linked spyware specialist acting with no consideration for the law. However, Amnesty’s report did not focus on this dimension and limited itself to the technical details, leaving the full extent of the legal violation largely obscured. Intellexa is among the world’s most notorious “mercenary spyware” purveyors. In 2023, the company was fined by Greece’s Data Protection Authority for failing to comply with its investigations into the company. 

An ongoing court case in Athens implicates Intellexa apparatchiks and local intelligence services in hacking the phones of government ministers, senior military officers, judges, and journalists. While Amnesty International exposes Intellexa’s spyware activities, it does not provide background on its founder, Tal Dilian, a senior former Israeli military intelligence operative, and is staffed by fellow Israeli spying veterans.

In March 2024, following years of damaging disclosures about Intellexa’s criminal activities, the US Treasury imposed sweeping sanctions on Dilian, his closest company confederates, and five separate commercial entities associated with Intellexa.

Yet, these harsh measures were no deterrent to Intellexa’s operations. The company’s service offering has only evolved over time, becoming ever more difficult to detect and increasingly effective at infecting target devices. Typically, civil society, human rights activists, and journalists are in the firing line.  (more...)

Stalked in real time: Intellexa, the Israeli Predator in your pocket