Prominent Angolan journalist targeted with Predator spyware

A phone used by prominent Angolan journalist Teixeira Candido was infected with surveillance software from spyware vendor Intellexa for a brief period in May 2024, Amnesty International said in a report published on Tuesday. Candido was the head of the Syndicate of Angolan Journalists when his phone was targeted with a series of WhatsApp messages starting in April 2024, according to the report. He appears to have clicked a link in one of the messages on May 4, which triggered the Predator infection, giving whoever targeted him full access to the contents of his phone, according to the report.

Intellexa’s spyware has been linked to a string of privacy abuses in recent years, according to researchers and the U.S. government. Amnesty International, which said it was the first confirmed case of Predator’s use in Angola, did not attribute the targeting to a specific government customer.

A lawyer associated with Intellexa did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday. “I feel exposed, as if I were taking a shower with the bathroom door wide open,” Candido told Reuters in an email Tuesday ahead of the report’s publication. He’s not sure what content the attackers may have pulled from his phone, and said he was targeted through a person he does not know, but who told him that they were part of a group of students and had a project for which they wanted his opinion.

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Prominent Angolan journalist, jurist and press freedom activist, Teixeira Cândido. [Photo via Amnesty International] The U.S. government sanctioned seven people associated with the Intellexa Consortium in March 2024.

A Treasury Department notice at the time described the business as “a complex international web of decentralized companies that built and commercialized a comprehensive suite of highly invasive spyware products” that had been used to target government officials, journalists, policy experts and opposition politicians. A new@amnestyinvestigation has established that prominent Angolan journalist Teixeira Cândido, was targeted with Intellexa’s Predator spyware in 2024. This is the first forensic confirmation of its use in Angola.https://t.co/vCvXe7xDo4

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