Google has revealed that an Italian spyware company used a number of tactics to target mobile users on iOS and Android.

The business, which targeted users in Italy and Kazakhstan, used atypical drive-by downloads as initial infection vectors.

“These vendors are enabling the proliferation of dangerous hacking tools and arming governments that would not be able to develop these capabilities in-house,” wrote Google in a blog post.

It warned that while the use of surveillance technology can be legal under national or international laws, they can often be used by governments to target journalists, dissidents, human rights works, and opposition party politicians.

Google also said that even though vulnerability research is important to online safety when used to improve the security of products, vendors “stockpiling zero-day vulnerabilities in secret poses a severe risk to the Internet, especially if the vendor gets compromised”.

The BigTech company said that this has happened to several spyware companies in the past decade.

Share Story: