Cellebrite Unlocked This Journalist’s Phone. Cops Then Infected it With Malware.

Nowadays, any electronic device is potentially subject to ‘invisible’ tampering. According to today's reference article, law enforcement officers in Serbia repeatedly unlocked several mobile phones and then infected them with malware. According to a new report by Amnesty International, a human rights organisation, the affected mobile phones mainly belong to activists and a journalist.

In order to unlock the devices, the authorities use specific tools from the tech company Cellebrite, which specialises in tools aimed at ‘speeding up justice’: collecting, examining, analysing and managing digital data inside physical media, such as mobile phones seized during investigations. However, recent developments show how they are using Cellebrite's products to install active surveillance technologies inside these devices, the malware mentioned above.

The collection of this information by the Serbian police is, to all intents and purposes, a violation of privacy, as well as an illegal act.