An Israeli ad company, DiscoverTech, has for years been secretly helping spyware developers place their hacking software on popular websites, researchers at Citizen Lab say, resulting in a cyberattack that targeted at least 45 devices at the news outlet Al Jazeera.
\n\nThe findings, documented in a report published Thursday by Citizen Lab, are the first time cybersecurity experts have shown how online ad platforms, so common across the internet that they are inescapable, can be used as a vector to hack visitors’ devices without their knowledge.
\n\n“Any time we browse the internet or open an app, all the data on our device can be hacked by malicious actors without us even knowing,” said Natalia Krapiva, a spyware expert at the digital rights nonprofit Access Now, who read the report and was not involved with its research. “States and tech companies whose infrastructure is used to conduct these attacks need to take urgent technical, legal and regulatory measures.”
\n\nThe report is a joint effort between Confiant, a U.S. ad security company, and the Citizen Lab, a University of Toronto operation that researches mercenary spyware computer programs. Spyware is often leased to governments around the world to help them hack devices of…
Original source: https://www.nbcnews.com/business