Cellebrite has cut off communication with Serbia due to misuse of its phone unlocking tools. Why not others?

Last year, Cellebrite announced that it makes phone hacking tools The Serbian police were suspended from acting as agentsAfter human rights researchers alleged that local police and intelligence agencies It used its tools to hack the phones of a journalist and an activistAnd plant spyware.

This was a rare example Celebrate Publicly cut off client after substantiated allegations of abuse, citing Amnesty International technical report For her decision.

But following recent similar accusations of abuse in Jordan and Kenya, the Israel-based company responded by dismissing the allegations and refusing to commit to investigating them. It’s not clear why Cellebrite changed its approach, which appears to be at odds with its previous actions.

On Tuesday, researchers at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto Published a report The Kenyan government allegedly used Cellebrite tools to unlock the phone of Boniface Mwangi, a local activist and politician, while he was in police custody. And in another report Since January, Citizen Lab has accused the Jordanian government of breaking into the phones of several local activists and protesters using Cellebrite tools.

In both investigations Citizen Laban organization that investigated the misuse of spyware and hacking techniques around the world, based its conclusions on finding traces of a specific application linked to Cellebrite on victims’ phones.

The researchers said these traces are a “high confidence” signal that someone used Cellebrite’s unlocking tools on the phones in question, because the app itself was previously found in VirusTotal, a malware repository, and was signed with digital certificates owned by Cellebrite.

Other researchers have also done so Connect the same application To Celebrate.

“We do not respond to speculation and encourage any organization with specific, evidence-based concerns to share them directly with us so we can act on them,” Victor Cooper, a Cellebrite spokesperson, told TechCrunch in an email.

When asked why Cellebright acted differently on the Serbia case, Cooper said: “The two positions are not comparable,” and that “high confidence is not direct evidence.”

Cooper did not respond to multiple follow-up emails asking whether Cellebrite would investigate Citizen Lab’s latest report, and what the differences, if any, were with its case in Serbia.

In its investigations in Kenya and Jordan, Citizen Lab reached out to Cellebrite before publishing the reports to provide the company with the right to respond.

In response to Jordan’s report, Cellebrite He said that “Any proven use of our tools in violation of human rights or local law will result in immediate deactivation,” but it has not committed to investigating the case and has refused to disclose specific information about customers.

However, for the Kenya report, Celebrite acknowledged receipt of Citizen Lab’s inquiry but did not comment, according to John Scott-Railton, one of the Citizen Lab researchers who worked on the Celebrite investigation.

“We urge Cellebrite to disclose the specific criteria it used to approve sales to Kenyan authorities, and disclose the number of licenses it has revoked in the past,” Scott-Railton told TechCrunch. “If Cellebrite was serious about its rigorous screening, it would have no problem making that public.”

Following previous reports of abuse, Cellebrite, which… Claims To have more than 7,000 law enforcement agents around the world, and to cut ties with them Bangladesh and Myanmarbesides Russia and Belarus During 2021. Cellebrite previously stated this Stop selling to Hong Kong and China in the wake of US government regulations restricting the export of sensitive technologies to the country. Local activists in Hong Kong has been accused Authorities use Cellebrite to unlock protesters’ phones.