The U.S. State Department said Monday that it is taking steps to impose visa restrictions on 13 people allegedly involved in developing and selling commercial spyware or who are immediate family members of those involved in such activities.
“These individuals facilitated or financially benefited from the misuse of this technology, which targeted journalists, academics, human rights defenders, dissidents, and other perceived critics, as well as U.S. government personnel,” the department said.
The names of the people subject to visa restrictions were not released, but the move comes more than two months after the US government said it was implementing a new policy imposing visa restrictions on people involved in practices that could threaten privacy and freedom of expression.
It also aims to counter the misuse and proliferation of commercial spyware used by authoritarian governments to spy on members of civil society, as well as promote accountability.
The development comes as Israeli publication Haaretz reported that Intellexa unveiled a proof-of-concept (PoC) system called Aladdin in 2022 that allowed spyware to be installed on phones through online ads.
The Intellexa consortium was sanctioned last month by the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) for developing, operating and distributing “commercial spyware designed to target government officials, journalists and political experts in the country .
It’s not just spyware, as Kaspersky recently reported that 31,031 unique users were affected by stalkerware in 2023, up from 29,312 the previous year, with the majority of them located in Russia, Brazil and India – a dubious distinction held from the three countries since 2019. .
“Stalkerware products are typically marketed as legitimate anti-theft or parental control apps for smartphones, tablets and computers, but they are actually something very different. Installed without the knowledge or consent of the person being monitored, these apps work covertly and provide a perpetrator with the means to gain control over the victim’s life,” the company said.