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Researchers Uncover Signs of Massive Surveillance Operation on Starlink Users

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Researchers Uncover Signs of Massive Surveillance Operation on Starlink Users

Discover-Tech, an Israeli advertising firm previously linked to the delivery of zero-click spyware, is the top bidder for Starlink ad impressions in 105 countries, according to a new report from Reuters. Researchers say it all points to a large-scale tracking effort aimed at users of SpaceX’s satellite internet service.

John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, posted on X that data from TrendAI suggest the existence of a “worldwide surveillance op targeting @Starlink users.”

Discover-Tech was previously named in Citizen Lab’s October 15th report as the buyer of ordinary-looking ads that delivered Candiru spyware to devices at Al Jazeera without any user interaction. Candiru is an Israeli mercenary spyware vendor (now rebranded as Integrity Labs) that develops tools capable of silently compromising phones and computers. In 2021, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security added Candiru to their trade restriction list, known as the Entity List, over concerns it supplied surveillance technology used against journalists, activists, and government officials.

Citizen Lab’s initial report on Discover-Tech and Candiru from a couple of weeks ago described the first public technical confirmation of zero-click mercenary spyware delivered through targeted advertising. The associated researchers said they identified at least 45 devices at Al Jazeera infected with Candiru spyware in 2024 and 2025. Citizen Lab used network logs to reconstruct a sequence in which devices contacted Discover-Tech infrastructure when advertisements loaded, followed within seconds by communications with a Candiru validation server.

Discover-Tech presented itself as a legitimate advertising company and maintained certified or approved vendor status with Google and IAB Europe from 2020 until earlier this month.


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