Spyware operators normally operate in the shadows, but in this case the hackers had no qualms about trying to use a public platform to entice their targets.
“It was quite a brazen and somewhat reckless way to try target people with some quite sophisticated spyware,” Donncha Ó Cearbhaill, head of Amnesty International’s Security Lab, told CNN.
The European Investigative Collaborations (EIC), a network of over a dozen news outlets, and the Washington Post
first reported on Amnesty’s findings.
Ó Cearbhaill told CNN he and his investigators are “very confident” in the links between the hackers and Vietnam, citing contract records reviewed by the EIC between the Vietnamese government and a company affiliated with the spyware.