Time.news – In Greece there is a lot of talk these days di Predator, a spyware used by the government to spy on MEP Nikos Androulakis and several journalists, according to accusations made by Thanasis Koukakis, a journalist specializing in corruption cases, who appeared before the Greek Supreme Court on Tuesday 16 August.
Based on his complaint, an investigation was opened last week, as reported by the Nouvelle Observateur in its edition today. The journalist, however, had already reported that he had already been monitored by the intelligence services in 2020, even before discovering that his phone had also been attacked by the illegal software Predator then, in 2021.
On December 16 of that same year the University of Toronto research laboratory later also revealed that this software had made it possible to spy on the opponent and former presidential candidate in Egypt Ayman Nour and an anonymous journalist in exile, also an Egyptian.
But what is spyware actually? “IS a particularly formidable weapon – notes the Nouvelle Observateur – because “it allows you to spy on a person leaving almost no trace. And come Pagasus, Predator can sneak into any type of smartphone, from iPhones to Android”.
By nesting in the depths of the infected phone, the software allows “access to messages, even encrypted, photos but also to activate the microphone and the camera, even remotely”.
And in its report, the Canadian research laboratory points the accusing finger at Cytrox, a company, based in North Macedonia, owned by Ivo Malinkovsky. He still writes the weekly: “On the Internet this character is scarcely mentioned. His LinkedIn page appears to have been cleaned up. No mention of his company appears since a Vice Media reporter contacted him. The CEO also took care to delete his profile image, on which he appeared behind a mug with the Cytrox logo ”.
But the intertwining does not end there: always according to the same relationship, Ivo Malinkovsky’s start-up became a subsidiary of the Wispear company in 2018, recently renamed Aveledo Ltd.
This company, based in Cyprus, was founded by Tal Dilian, a former Israeli commander, who introduces himself as an intelligence expert who also created Intellexa, an alliance of several companies specializing in surveillance, as the French weekly notes.
In its report, the research lab claims to have found potential customers in several countries, including Armenia, Egypt, Greece, Indonesia, Madagascar, Oman, Saudi Arabia and Serbia, as well as having identified customer movements in Bangladesh, Hong Kong, United States, New Zealand and even Poland.
In addition to the aforementioned survey, the parent company of Facebook, Meta claims to have deleted 300 Facebook and Instagram accounts used by Cytrox and by its customers to optimize their objectives: which are espionage.
In any case, the software and its Cytrox company, close to Israel, have already been blocked, particularly after monitoring an opponent who was in Egypt.