Russia Hacked A Dissident’s iPhone With Banned Israeli Tech, Records Show
Citizen Lab said forensic logs show Russian investigators used the UFED tool to extract messages and search for opposition names after Cellebrite ended sales.
- In June 2021, Russian authorities used technology from Israeli forensics firm Cellebrite to hack the iPhone of opposition politician Andrey Pivovarov, despite the company's prior public announcement that it had terminated sales to Moscow.
- Cellebrite had announced in March 2021 that it would immediately stop selling data-extraction tools to Russia, following international backlash after the Kremlin used the technology to raid the phone of opposition figure Lyubov Sobol.
- Forensic evidence uncovered by the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab confirms that the Criminalist Expert Center used a Cellebrite Universal Forensic Extraction Device to access Pivovarov's private messages, including searches for political terms.
- Cellebrite Chief Marketing Officer David Gee claimed any use of legacy hardware after March 2021 is "entirely unauthorized," stating older devices operate without the company's technical support, consent, or legal sanction.
- Experts argue the incident underscores the difficulty surveillance firms face in disabling tools once deployed, as researchers have documented similar unauthorized usage in Myanmar, Serbia, and Jordan.
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A politician, former director of Open Russia, Andrei Pivovarov, reported that the FSB had hacked his phone using the equipment of the Israeli company Cellebrite, and that Pivovarov had told us about it on his television channel on June 25, and Citisen Lab, who found spy equipment in the iPhone of Pivovarovov, gave further details.
Russia cracked an activist’s iPhone with Cellebrite, months after the firm said it left
A Citizen Lab report puts forensic evidence and a Russian court document behind a familiar problem: surveillance tools do not come home when the seller asks. Russian government unit broke into the iPhone of a detained opposition politician using a forensic tool made by Cellebrite, three months after the Israeli firm publicly announced it had […] This story continues at The Next Web
The Citisen Lab Laboratory at the University of Toronto and the American organization Access Now released a report on the use of...
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