Pierluigi Paganini January 15, 2023

1.7 TB of data stolen from Cellebrite, a digital intelligence company that provides tools for law enforcement, were leaked online.

The Israeli mobile forensics firm Cellebrite is one of the leading companies in the world in the field of digital forensics, it works with law enforcement and intelligence agencies worldwide.

One of the most popular services provided by the company is the UFED (Universal Foresenic Extraction Device) which is used by law enforcement and intelligence agencies to unlock and access data on mobile devices.

Hacktivists argued that the tools have been used in the past against journalists, activists, and dissidents around the world.

Many reports [1, 2, 3, 4] claim the technology provided by Cellbrite was used by government to spy on journalists and citizens, violating human rights. Cellebrite has to be aware of the human rights violations of its customers, human rights advocated remarks the company has the responsibility to carry out due diligence on its government clients and monitor misuse of its technology.

The company then became the target of activists and animated whistleblowers.

The data of the Israeli company and of another Swedish forensics firm, MSAB, have been leaked online by the Enlace Hacktivist collective, with the support of a whistleblower, and later through the DDoSsecret platform

“Jan 13, 2023: An anonymous whistleblower sent us phone forensics software and documentation from Cellebrite and MSAB. These companies sell to police and governments around the world who use it to collect information from the phones of journalists, activists, and dissidents.” reads the announce published by Enlace Hacktivist on its page. “Both companies’ software is well documented as being used in human rights abuses[1][2][3] The leaks are available for download as torrents or direct download”

The archive shared by the archivist via Torrent includes the entire Cellbrite suite, along with a huge trove of file used for the localization of software, and technical guides for customers.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, Cellebrite)

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