A Canadian laboratory reveals a new Israeli spy program

Ottawa, (ST) -Canada’s “Citizen Lab”, which focuses on cyberspace, global security and human rights has revealed that a new Israeli spy program similar to the infamous ‘Pegasus’ program has been used to target journalists and opposition politicians in different countries..

The Citizen Lab is an interdisciplinary laboratory based at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, University of Toronto.

AFP quoted the laboratory as saying in a report: “The new program was designed by a little-known Israeli company called “Quadream Ltd. founded by a former Israeli military official and former employees of the “NSO” company that produced Pegasus.

The report revealed that the Quadream program is currently being used by countries in North America, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, Europe and the Middle East. It pointed out that after placing it on the user’s phone or personal computer, it records calls and external sounds, takes pictures from cameras and searches in device files without knowledge of the user, as well as generate two-factor authentication codes i.e. a password and a security code to secure continuous access to the device owner’s cloud accounts.

Citizen Lab noted that the spyware includes a self-destruct function to hide its previous existence once it has not been used.

The Pegasus spyware program produced by an Israeli company sparked a global uproar after it was revealed that it was used to spy on many political figures, journalists and activists around the world.

Raghda Sawas