A series of sophisticated cyberattacks targeting Egyptian journalists, academics, lawyers, opposition politicians and human rights activists has been traced to Egyptian government offices, a cybersecurity firm has found. The attackers installed software on the targets’ phones that enabled them to read the victims’ files and emails, track their locations, identify who they contacted and when, according to a report to be published Thursday by Check Point Software Technologies, one of the biggest cybersecurity companies in the world, with headquarters just south of San Francisco and in Tel Aviv. Two activists who were targeted by the cyberattack were arrested in a roundup of prominent opposition figures last month as part of Egypt’s crackdown on antigovernment protests. Check Point found that the central server used in the attacks was registered in the name of the Egyptian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology and that geographic coordinates embedded in one of the applications used to track the activists corresponded to the headquarters of Egypt’s main spy agency, the General Intelligence Service.

Source: International New York Times October 03, 2019 09:33 UTC