The "watering hold attack" adds to a growing list of security issues traced to private companies that sell ways for governments to monitor individuals.
November 16, 2021 By Kevin Collier
A secretive Israeli company helped hack a British news site and used it to take over the devices of some people who visited the site, cyberreseachers say.
The cybersecurity firm ESET said in a report Tuesday that the company, Candiru, helped an unknown foreign government hack the London news site Middle East Eye with a so-called watering hole attack, which places malicious software on a website to infect and hack the computers of people who visit it.
The research is a rare insight into Candiru, which was blacklisted this month by the U.S. Commerce Department for supplying “spyware to foreign governments that used this tool to maliciously target government officials, journalists, businesspeople, activists, academics, and embassy workers.”