HIDE AND SEEK Tracking NSO Group’s Pegasus Spyware to Operations in 45 Countries By Bill Marczak John Scott-Railton Sarah McKune Bahr Abdul Razzak and Ron Deibert SEPTEMBER 18 2018 RESEARCH REPORT #113 Copyright © The Citizen Lab Licensed under the Creative Commons BY-SA 4 0 Attribution-ShareAlike licence Electronic version first published in 2018 by the Citizen Lab This work can be accessed through https citizenlab ca 2018 09 hideand-seek-tracking-nso-groups-pegasus-spyware-to-operations-in-45countries Document Version 1 0 The Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4 0 license under which this report is licensed lets you freely copy distribute remix transform and build on it as long as you • give appropriate credit • indicate whether you made changes and • use and link to the same CC BY-SA 4 0 licence However any rights in excerpts reproduced in this report remain with their respective authors and any rights in brand and product names and associated logos remain with their respective owners Uses of these that are protected by copyright or trademark rights require the rightsholder’s prior written agreement Suggested Citation Bill Marczak John Scott-Railton Sarah McKune Bahr Abdul Razzak and Ron Deibert “Hide and Seek Tracking NSO Group’s Pegasus Spyware to Operations in 45 Countries ” Citizen Lab Research Report No 113 University of Toronto September 2018 Acknowledgements Bill Marczak’s work on this project was supported by the Center for Long Term Cybersecurity CLTC at UC Berkeley This work was also supported by grants to the Citizen Lab from the Ford Foundation the John T and Catherine D MacArthur Foundation the Oak Foundation the Open Society Foundations and the Sigrid Rausing Trust This work includes data from Censys Editing and other assistance provided by Cynthia Khoo Jeffrey Knockel Jakub Dalek Miles Kenyon Adam Senft Jon Penney and Masashi Nishihata About the Citizen Lab Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy University of Toronto The Citizen Lab is an interdisciplinary laboratory based at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy University of Toronto focusing on research development and high-level strategic policy and legal engagement at the intersection of information and communication technologies human rights and global security We use a “mixed methods” approach to research that combines methods from political science law computer science and area studies Our research includes investigating digital espionage against civil society documenting Internet filtering and other technologies and practices that impact freedom of expression online analyzing privacy security and information controls of popular applications and examining transparency and accountability mechanisms relevant to the relationship between corporations and state agencies regarding personal data and other surveillance activities Contents 1 Executive Summary 6 Scanning Clustering and DNS Cache Probing 7 Our Findings 7 Mexico 8 Gulf Cooperation Council GCC Countries 9 Other Country Contexts 9 2 Fingerprinting Pegasus Infrastructure 10 Background 10 Fingerprinting in 2016 Decoy Pages 10 Fingerprinting in 2017 and 2018 No More Decoys 10 Charting the Rebirth of Pegasus 11 3 DNS Cache Probing Results 12 Background 12 Operators Focusing on the Americas 12 Operators Focusing on Africa 13 Operators Focusing on Europe 14 Operators Focusing on the Middle East 14 Operators Focusing on Asia 15 Highly Customized Operators with Unclear Focus 17 4 DNS Cache Probing Technique Background on DNS and Cache Probing Note Ethics of DNS Cache Probing Finding Suitable DNS Forwarders Understanding DNS Cache Probing False Positives Why Is a Domain Name in the Cache The Experiments Possible Limitations 17 17 19 20 21 23 23 24 Contents 5 Conclusion Known spyware abusers operating Pegasus Widespread cross-border surveillance with Pegasus Failures at due diligence contribution to global cyber insecurity Communications with NSO Group Appendix A Interesting Domains and ASNs of DNS Cache Hits by Operator 24 24 25 26 26 29 HIDE AND SEEK Key Findings ›› Between August 2016 and August 2018 we scanned the Internet for servers associated with NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware We found 1 091 IP addresses that matched our fingerprint and 1 014 domain names that pointed to them We developed and used Athena a novel technique to cluster some of our matches into 36 distinct Pegasus systems each one which appears to be run by a separate operator ›› We designed and conducted a global DNS Cache Probing study on the matching domain names in order to identify in which countries each operator was spying Our technique identified a total of 45 countries where Pegasus operators may be conducting surveillance operations At least 10 Pegasus operators appear to be actively engaged in cross-border surveillance ›› Our findings paint a bleak picture of the human rights risks of NSO’s global proliferation At least six countries with significant Pegasus operations have previously been linked to abusive use of spyware to target civil society including Bahrain Kazakhstan Mexico Morocco Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates ›› Pegasus also appears to be in use by countries with dubious human rights records and histories of abusive behaviour by state security services In addition we have found indications of possible political themes within targeting materials in several countries casting doubt on whether the technology is being used as part of “legitimate” criminal investigations Figure 1 Scope scale and context of Pegasus as identified in this report 6 CITIZEN LAB RESEARCH REPORT NO 113 1 Executive Summary Israel-based “Cyber Warfare” vendor NSO Group produces and sells a mobile phone spyware suite called Pegasus To monitor a target a government operator of Pegasus must convince the target to click on a specially crafted exploit link which when clicked delivers a chain of zero-day exploits to penetrate security features on the phone and installs Pegasus without the user’s knowledge or permission Once the phone is exploited and Pegasus is installed it begins contacting the operator’s command and control C C servers to receive and execute operators’ commands and send back the target’s private data including passwords contact lists calendar events text messages and live voice calls from popular mobile messaging apps The operator can even turn on the phone’s camera and microphone to capture activity in the phone’s vicinity Figure 2 Diagram from purported NSO Group Pegasus documentation showing the range of information gathered from a device infected with Pegasus Source Hacking Team Emails Pegasus exploit links and C C servers use HTTPS which requires operators to register and maintain domain names Domain names for exploit links sometimes impersonate mobile providers online services banks and government services which may make the links appear to be benign at first glance An operator may 7 HIDE AND SEEK have several domain names that they use in exploit links they send and also have several domain names they use for C C The domain names often resolve to cloudbased virtual private servers we call these front-end servers rented either by NSO Group or the operator The front-end servers appear to forward traffic via a chain of other servers to servers located on the operator’s premises we call these the back-end Pegasus servers Scanning Clustering and DNS Cache Probing In August 2016 award-winning UAE activist Ahmed Mansoor was targeted with NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware We clicked on the link he was sent and obtained three zero-day exploits for the Apple iPhone as well as a copy of the Pegasus spyware We fingerprinted the behaviour of the exploit link and C C servers in the sample sent to Mansoor and scanned the Internet for other matching front-end servers We found 237 servers After we clicked on the link but before we published our findings on August 24 NSO Group had apparently taken down all of the Pegasus front-end servers we detected In the weeks after our report we noticed a small number of Pegasus front-end servers come back online but the servers no longer matched our fingerprint We developed a new fingerprint and began conducting regular Internet scans Between August 2016 and August 2018 we detected 1 091 IP addresses and 1 014 domain names matching our fingerprint We developed and used Athena a novel fingerprinting technique to group most of our results into 36 distinct Pegasus systems each one perhaps run by a separate operator Section 2 We next sought to identify where these Pegasus systems were being used We hypothesized that devices infected with Pegasus would regularly look up one or more of the domain names for the operator’s Pegasus front-end servers using their ISP’s DNS servers We regularly probed tens of thousands of ISP DNS caches around the world via DNS forwarders looking for the Pegasus domain names Section 3 Our Findings We found suspected NSO Pegasus infections associated with 33 of the 36 Pegasus operators we identified in 45 countries Algeria Bahrain Bangladesh Brazil Canada Cote d’Ivoire Egypt France Greece India Iraq Israel Jordan Kazakhstan Kenya Kuwait Kyrgyzstan Latvia Lebanon Libya Mexico Morocco the Netherlands Oman Pakistan Palestine Poland Qatar Rwanda Saudi Arabia Singapore South 8 CITIZEN LAB RESEARCH REPORT NO 113 Africa Switzerland Tajikistan Thailand Togo Tunisia Turkey the UAE Uganda the United Kingdom the United States Uzbekistan Yemen and Zambia As our findings are based on country-level geolocation of DNS servers factors such as VPNs and satellite Internet teleport locations can introduce inaccuracies Figure 3 Global map of suspected NSO Pegasus infections Mexico In 2017 we discovered by retrospectively inspecting their text messages that dozens of Mexican lawyers journalists human rights defenders opposition politicians anti-corruption advocates and an international investigation operating in Mexico were targeted in 2016 with links to NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware The Mexico revelations sparked a major political scandal #GobiernoEspía and an ensuing criminal investigation ongoing as of the date of this report Even after our prior reporting on the abuse of the Pegasus spyware in Mexico it appears that there are three separate operators who operate predominantly in Mexico as of July 2018 9 HIDE AND SEEK Gulf Cooperation Council GCC Countries We identify what appears to be a significant expansion of Pegasus usage in the Gulf Cooperation Council GCC countries in the Middle East In total we identify at least six operators with significant GCC operations including at least two that appear to predominantly focus on the UAE one that appears to predominantly focus on Bahrain and one with a Saudi focus Three operators may be conducting surveillance beyond the MENA region including in Canada France Greece the United Kingdom and the United States The GCC countries are well known for abusing surveillance tools to track dissidents In August 2016 UAE activist Ahmed Mansoor was targeted with NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware after previously being targeted with spyware from FinFisher and Hacking Team Bahrain is noteworthy for compromising journalists lawyers opposition politicians and pro-democracy activists with FinFisher’s spyware between 2010 and 2012 In May and June 2018 Amnesty International reported that an Amnesty staffer and a Saudi activist based abroad were targeted with NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware The same operator responsible for that targeting appears to be conducting surveillance across the Middle East as well as in Europe and North America Saudi Arabia is currently seeking to execute five nonviolent human rights activists accused of chanting slogans at demonstrations and publishing protest videos on social media Other Country Contexts We identify five operators focusing on Africa including one that appears to be predominantly focusing on the West African country of Togo a staunch Israel ally whose long-serving President has employed torture and excessive force against peaceful opposition The operator in Togo may have used websites with names like “nouveau president” “new president” and “politiques infos” “political information” to infect targets with spyware A separate operator that appears to focus on Morocco may also be spying on targets in other countries including Algeria France and Tunisia We identify several operators operating in Israel four that appear to operate domestically1 and one that appears to operate both in Israel as well as other countries including the Netherlands Palestine Qatar Turkey and the USA 1 As NSO Group is based in Israel some of these might perhaps be demonstration or testing systems 10 CITIZEN LAB RESEARCH REPORT NO 113 2 Fingerprinting Pegasus Infrastructure This section describes how we traced Pegasus infrastructure from our initial discovery in 2016 until the present Background We first began tracking NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware after the operators of UAE threat actor Stealth Falcon later revealed to be UAE cybersecurity company DarkMatter inadvertently gave us visibility into Pegasus infrastructure by registering a domain name whose homepage included a Pegasus link using the same email address as a domain for a separate PC spyware product we were tracking In August 2016 UAE activist Ahmed Mansoor was targeted with Pegasus with a text message sent to his iPhone We clicked on the link provided in the message and obtained three zero-day exploits for Apple iOS 9 3 3 as well as a copy of the Pegasus spyware We disclosed the exploits to Apple which quickly released a patch blocking the Pegasus spyware According to our scans all of the Pegasus servers we detected except for the C C servers in the sample sent to Mansoor were shut down at least two days before we published our results Fingerprinting in 2016 Decoy Pages When we sought to build fingerprints for Pegasus infrastructure in 2016 we scanned the Internet for redirect aspx and Support aspx for which Pegasus servers returned decoy pages A decoy page is a page shown when there is an undesired remote landing on a spyware server and is designed to convince the user that they are viewing a normal benign website However because the functionality for showing decoy pages typically resides in the spyware server’s code and likely nowhere else it is often trivial for researchers to build fingerprints for decoy pages and scan the Internet for these fingerprints to identify other servers associated with the same spyware system including perhaps the servers of other operators if the same spyware system is used by multiple operators Fingerprinting in 2017 and 2018 No More Decoys After our August 2016 report NSO Group apparently removed the redirect aspx and Support aspx decoy pages and further modified their server code to close an incoming connection without returning any data unless presented with a valid exploit link or other path on the server This change is in line with changes made by 11 HIDE AND SEEK competitors FinFisher and Hacking Team after we disclosed how we fingerprinted their hidden infrastructure with decoy pages After studying the behavior of several suspected new Pegasus servers we developed fingerprints ξ1 ξ2 and ξ3 and a technique that we call Athena 2 Fingerprint ξ1 is a Transport Layer Security TLS fingerprint Fingerprints ξ2 and ξ3 represent two different proxying configurations we observed We considered a server to be part of NSO Group’s infrastructure if it matched ξ1 and also one of ξ2 or ξ3 We then used Athena to group our fingerprint matches into 36 clusters We believe that each cluster represents an operator of NSO Pegasus spyware though it is possible that some may represent demonstration or testing systems As we have done in the past when reporting on vendors of targeted malware we have chosen to withhold publication of specific fingerprints and techniques to prevent harm that may result from external parties generating a list of NSO Group domains using these methods Charting the Rebirth of Pegasus NSO Group apparently told business associates that our August 2016 report and disclosures of their exploits to Apple “…disrupted their work for around 30 minutes before they…resumed operations ” Our scanning of NSO Group’s infrastructure tells a somewhat different story Figure 4 Figure 4 Pegasus servers available over time 2 According to some accounts of the Pegasus myth Athena tamed the Pegasus “For Athena they say was the divinity who gave most help to Bellerophontes and she delivered to him Pegasus having herself broken in and bridled him ” 12 CITIZEN LAB RESEARCH REPORT NO 113 Twelve of the servers that were shut down before we published Million Dollar Dissident we call these Version 2 servers were back online in a September 25 2016 scan and stayed online mostly continuously until an August 10 2017 scan These may have been C C servers for clients that wished to continue monitoring old infections We saw the first Version 3 server in a September 5 2017 scan less than two weeks after Million Dollar Dissident Approximately one month after Million Dollar Dissident we saw what appeared to be seven operators online Two months after our report we saw 14 operators online 3 DNS Cache Probing Results This section describes the results of our DNS Cache Probing study to identify suspected Pegasus infections see Section 4 for study details as well as the definition of a “suspected infection” Background We used the technique that we call Athena to cluster the IP addresses that matched our Pegasus fingerprints into what we believe are 36 distinct operators each operator makes use of multiple IP addresses We give each operator an Operator Name drawn from national symbols or geographic features of the country or region that appears to be targeted For each IP address used by the operator we extracted a domain name from its TLS certificate We coded the domain names to generate a Suspected Country Focus and assessed whether there were Political Themes in the domains which might suggest politically motivated targeting We then performed DNS cache probing to generate a list of countries in which there are Possible Infections associated with the operator Operators Focusing on the Americas We identified five or six operators that we believe are operating in the Americas One operator that we call MACAW may be focused on Honduras or neighboring countries because it made use of two interesting domain names showing a possible link to Honduras politica504 com and eltiempo-news com However our DNS cache probing technique did not identify any suspected infections relating to this system 13 HIDE AND SEEK At the time of our June 2017 Reckless Exploit report about the abuse of NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware in Mexico there were four operators using domain names that suggested a link to Mexico RECKLESS-1 RECKLESS-2 PRICKLYPEAR and AGUILAREAL RECKLESS-1 and RECKLESS-2 employed some domain names containing political themes RECKLESS-1 used universopolitico net and animalpolitico com RECKLESS-2 used noticiaspoliticos com and politicoportales org Operators RECKLESS-1 and RECKLESS-2 are so named because they were swiftly and completely shut down following publication of our report Operators PRICKLYPEAR and AGUILAREAL were partially shut down two or three servers for each remained online One month after publication in July 2017 the first domain names for a new operator MAYBERECKLESS that would focus on Mexico were registered The MAYBERECKLESS domains began matching our fingerprint in September 2017 MAYBERECKLESS may be a continuation of RECKLESS-1 or RECKLESS-2 Also in September 2017 the remaining servers from PRICKLYPEAR and AGUILAREAL were supplemented with new servers Operator name Suspected country focus Dates operator was active Political themes Suspected infections RECKLESS-1 Sep 2016 – Jun 2017 Mexico Yes – RECKLESS-2 Oct 2016 – Jun 2017 Mexico Yes – MAYBERECKLESS Sep 2017 – present – – Mexico PRICKLYPEAR Oct 2016 – present Mexico – Mexico USA Arizona AGUILAREAL Sep 2016 – present Mexico – Mexico MACAW Nov 2017 – present Honduras Yes – Operators Focusing on Africa We identified five operators that we believe are focusing on Africa One operator that we call REDLIONS uses frontend domains that appear to be almost exclusively written in the French language including two politically themed domains politiques-infos info and nouveau-president com We found DNS cache probing hits for REDLIONS in Togo Because we did not perform our DNS cache probing study until July 2018 we did not have the opportunity to probe one operator AK47 which shut down in July 2017 Operators ATLAS and GRANDLACS also made use of politically themed domains ATLAS used revolution-news co and GRANDLACS used politicalpress org 14 CITIZEN LAB RESEARCH REPORT NO 113 Operator name Dates operator was active Suspected country focus Political themes Suspected infections REDLIONS Mar 2017 – present – Yes Togo ATLAS Aug 2017 – present Morocco Yes Algeria Cote d’Ivoire France Morocco Tunisia UAE GRANDLACS Jun 2017 – present Great Lakes region of Africa Yes Kenya Rwanda South Africa Uganda MULUNGUSHI Feb 2018 – present Zambia – South Africa Zambia AK47 Dec 2016 – Jul 2017 Mozambique – – MACAW Nov 2017 – present Honduras Yes – Operators Focusing on Europe We identified five operators that we believe are focusing on Europe Two systems that we call TURUL and CHEQUY appear to have a Hungarian and Croatian focus in their frontend domain names but we did not find any DNS cache probing hits for these systems Operator name Dates operator was active Suspected country focus Political themes Suspected infections ORZELBIALY Nov 2017 – present Poland – Poland EDELWEISS Jul 2017 – present Switzerland – Switzerland 5LATS Mar 2018 – present Latvia – Latvia TURUL Feb 2018 – present Hungary – – CHEQUY Nov 2016 – present Croatia – – MACAW Nov 2017 – present Honduras Yes – Operators Focusing on the Middle East We identified 12 operators that we believe are focusing on the Middle East One operator PEARL appears to be focused on Bahrain One operator KINGDOM was behind the recent targeting of an Amnesty staffer and a Saudi Arabian activist abroad Operator PEARL used politically themed domain names including shia-voice com referring to a politically repressed religious group in Bahrain and 14-tracking com perhaps referring to the February 14 Youth Coalition a group leading some anti-government protests and operator FALCON used nomorewarnow com 15 HIDE AND SEEK Operator name Dates operator was active Suspected country focus Political themes Suspected infections PEARL Jul 2017 – present Bahrain Yes Bahrain Qatar FALCON Oct 2016 – present UAE Yes UAE BABYFALCON May 2018 – present GCC Region – UAE MAYBEFALCON Sep 2016 – present – – UAE BLACKBIRD Sep 2016 – present – – Greece Jordan Kuwait Libya Qatar UAE UK USA Yemen – Bahrain Canada Egypt France Iraq Jordan Lebanon Morocco Qatar Saudi Arabia Turkey UK KINGDOM Oct 2017 – present Saudi Arabia MIDDLE Sep 2016 – present – – France Jordan Lebanon Oman Qatar Tunisia Turkey UAE OLIVE-1 Jun 2017 – present – – Israel OLIVE-2 Aug 2017 – present – – Israel OLIVE-3 Dec 2016 – present – – Israel OLIVE-4 Oct 2016 – present – – Israel DOME Mar 2018 – present – – Israel Netherlands Palestine Qatar Turkey USA Operators Focusing on Asia We identified five operators that we believe are focusing on Asia One operator GANGES used a politically themed domain signpetition co Operator name Dates operator was active Suspected country focus Political themes Suspected infections CHANG Jan 2018 – present Asia – Thailand GANGES Jun 2017 – present – Yes Bangladesh Brazil Hong Kong India Pakistan MERLION Dec 2016 – present – – Singapore TULPAR Feb 2017 – present Kazakhstan – Kazakhstan SYRDARYA Sep 2016 – present Uzbekistan – Kazakhstan Kyrgyzstan Tajikistan Turkey Uzbekistan Nov 2017 – present Honduras Yes – 16 CITIZEN LAB RESEARCH REPORT NO 113 Highly Customized Operators with Unclear Focus We identified three operators with an unclear focus which all appeared to use a large degree of customization in their operations Operator SUPERSIZE active Sep 2016 – present had by far the largest Pegasus deployment based on number of domain names we found 118 domain names belonging to SUPERSIZE We found interesting DNS cache hits in Israel and Bahrain but did not have enough information to determine whether these might be suspected infections It may be the case that SUPERSIZE was monitoring relatively few people with a relatively large amount of infrastructure or that some of SUPERSIZE’s targets may have been outside areas we could measure with DNS cache probing or that SUPERSIZE was operating in an especially stealthy manner with targets under sporadic rather than continuous surveillance Operator SNEAK active Oct 2016 – present had infrastructure that appeared to reflect a high level of customization including running C C servers on nonstandard ports and making use of dynamic DNS services SNEAK was the operator that accidentally reused some of its old infrastructure facilitating our continued visibility into NSO Group’s infrastructure after our Million Dollar Dissident report We found interesting DNS cache hits on this system in Syria Lebanon Qatar the Netherlands and the United States but did not have enough information to determine whether these might be suspected infections Operator PARTY active May 2017 – present used domain names with extremely long TTLs We found interesting DNS cache hits on this system in Syria and Lebanon but did not have enough information to determine whether these might be suspected infections 4 DNS Cache Probing Technique This section describes our DNS Cache Probing technique Background on DNS and Cache Probing When a user or a computer program instructs a computer or mobile device to communicate with a domain name e g www citizenlab ca the device first sends 17 HIDE AND SEEK a request to a Domain Name Service DNS server in order to learn the IP address corresponding to the domain name By default the device communicates with a DNS server maintained by the ISP or telecom company to which the device is connected DNS servers cache mappings between IP addresses and domain names temporarily typically for a duration specified by the owner of the domain name e g 300 seconds When a device looks up a domain name that is not in the server’s cache the server contacts other DNS servers to resolve the domain name “recursively” and then stores the record in the cache When a device looks up a domain name that is already in the server’s cache the server returns the record from the cache along with a time to live TTL value that indicates when the server will expire the record from the cache If the TTL value returned by the server is less than that set by the owner of the domain then it is likely that the record returned by the DNS server was present in the server’s cache and thus was looked up by some other ISP user relatively recently One can also send a query to a DNS server with the Recursion Desired flag set to 0 called a nonrecursive query indicating to the server that it should only consult its cache before responding if the record is not in the cache the server should not contact other servers to attempt to resolve the domain and should not add anything to its cache Some DNS servers may choose to not respect this flag Sending queries whether nonrecursive or recursive to a DNS server for the purpose of observing less-than-full TTLs is a measurement technique called DNS cache probing or DNS cache snooping The author of the original presentation of DNS cache probing in 2004 framed it as detrimental to security and privacy and proposed that operators of DNS servers such as ISPs should block DNS queries not originating from their own network Implementing such a precaution would make it harder for a single observer to directly probe caches of DNS servers A 2006 investigation of a botnet C C server employed DNS cache probing to investigate prevalence of botnet infections the authors in that case appear to have probed DNS servers that were authoritative for some domain rather than DNS forwarders Even in cases where ISPs block requests to their DNS servers from non-ISP-users it is sometimes possible to probe the DNS servers’ caches by using open DNS forwarders on the ISP’s network An open DNS forwarder is a service that accepts queries from any Internet user and forwards the query unmolested perhaps to an ISP server 18 CITIZEN LAB RESEARCH REPORT NO 113 which then responds to the forwarder which in turn responds to the user From the perspective of the ISP’s DNS server the submitter of the query the forwarder is on the ISP’s network Open DNS forwarders may be running on improperly configured routers or IoT devices Note Ethics of DNS Cache Probing In keeping with the growing emphasis on ethics in network measurement research we considered the impacts of our technical activities on persons that are not the targets of our research and sought to minimize the likelihood of any disruption Notably we examined the possibility of costs to users service disruption or unwanted warnings from their ISPs We believe that this research was conducted in a manner that mitigates these risks and serves the public interest Firstly we considered the possibility that users might incur costs or service disruption as a result of our DNS Cache Probing We believe that this is a highly unlikely outcome given the small number of requests made during the activity As deployed the technique results in fewer than one request per second per IP address and thus is less than one kilobyte per second The total traffic is thus less than 100 megabytes per day To further minimize load on the authoritative name servers for the domains that we are probing we use nonrecursive queries only As a result we do not anticipate costs incurred by users or bandwidth degradation We determined that it was unlikely that users would receive unwelcome inquiries from their ISPs or other authorities as the result of our DNS cache probing Certainly open DNS forwarders are a major Internet security risk as they may be employed in DNS amplification DDoS attacks Such high-volume attacks might come to the notice of ISPs or other authorities and trigger inquiries or sanction by ISPs DNS Cache Probing in contrast is a very low-volume activity If an open DNS operator has not already received a contact from their ISP we think it very unlikely that this technique will trigger contacts since it does not look ‘attack-like ’ At the time of writing we are unaware of any evidence of DNS Cache Probing used in malicious real-world attacks As the technique of DNS Cache Probing continues to be developed as a research tool it will be important to ensure that it continues to be used in ways that do not present privacy and security concerns 19 HIDE AND SEEK Finding Suitable DNS Forwarders We first develop a list of suitable DNS forwarders We run three tests to answer the following questions 1 Does the forwarder appear to use resolvers that honour nonrecursive queries We send a nonrecursive query for a randomized subdomain of a domain we control and check if we get a response The randomized subdomain resolves to an IP but should not be in any cache We check each IP twice if we ever get a correct answer then the IP does not honour nonrecursive queries 2 Which resolvers does the forwarder use We run a customized nameserver for a domain we control the nameserver returns the source IP of an incoming DNS query as one of the answers in the response We query each IP 10 times with a recursive query for a randomized subdomain of the domain we control and collect the set of IPs returned by our nameserver 3 Is the forwarder likely to have access to an interesting cache We query each IP 10 consecutive times with a recursive query for google com If an IP returns a response with an IP in Google’s autonomous system AS #15169 at least once then the forwarder may have access to an interesting cache A DNS forwarder is suitable if • It appears to honour nonrecursive queries • The forwarder appears to only ever forward requests to resolvers in a single Autonomous System AS We exclude forwarders that use resolvers in multiple ASes because when such a forwarder shows a DNS cache hit we do not know in which AS the DNS cache hit actually occurred • The single AS of the forwarder’s resolvers is designated as “Transit 20 CITIZEN LAB RESEARCH REPORT NO 113 Access” by CAIDA’s AS Classification dataset This helps avoid some cloud providers and shared DNS providers like Google OpenDNS Yandex CloudFlare etc • The AS of the forwarder’s resolvers is not equal to any AS where we found a match for an NSO Group server • The forwarder is not itself a resolver in other words the forwarder IP does not appear amongst the resolvers • The forwarder is likely to have access to an interesting cache Each time we scanned our list included 38 000 suitable forwarders excluding forwarders in China Understanding DNS Cache Probing False Positives DNS cache probing can produce false positives i e the DNS cache probing technique reports that the domain is in the cache when it is in fact not in the cache or when we caused it to be in the cache This can happen in the following three cases 1 A DNS forwarder does not honor nonrecursive queries all of the time it may forward some subset of our queries to a resolver that does not honor nonrecursive queries This can result in our query adding the domain to the cache 2 A DNS forwarder might return the entry that we added to the cache in 1 This can happen even for DNS forwarders that do honour nonrecursive queries 100% of the time 3 Automated processes or curious researchers may observe our DNS cache probing and send DNS queries for the domain names we are probing this may add the domain names to caches we are probing We conducted several control experiments to determine how best to exclude false positives In our control experiments we selected 50 domain names with a wildcard record and an authoritative TTL of at least 300 seconds then generated a random string to use as a subdomain and continuously queried all 50 domains with the subdomain on all resolvers once roughly every 300 seconds in a fixed order at a rate ensuring each domain was queried at least once every 300 seconds We ran the experiment for 24 hours 21 HIDE AND SEEK Any results we received during the control experiments we treated as false positives We developed a set of heuristics to reduce the false positive rate to 0 in these experiments with the idea that these same heuristics might help us eliminate many false positives from our DNS cache probing study of the spyware domains These are the conditions we applied to eliminate false positives from our results 1 Exclude duplicate observations of the same lookup For each DNS server response we check to see if the observation is a duplicate Specifically if a response for a given domain name was preceded by a response from any DNS forwarder for that same domain name n seconds ago and the TTL of the prior response differed by n ± 2 from the present response then we excluded the present response 2 Exclude possible duplicate observations even if clocks run at an incorrect rate For each ASN we excluded a record if its TTL was less than or equal to the immediately prior record for that domain returned by any DNS forwarder for the same ASN or IP We implemented this condition because for some ASNs we identified monotonically nondecreasing sequences of TTLs for domains with large TTLs that appeared to correspond with clocks running at incorrect rates and suspected that these may have been false positives 3 Exclude any observation with an improper TTL We exclude all observations with TTLs larger than the TTL set by the domain name’s authoritative DNS server authoritative TTL as well as all observations with TTLs within 2 of the authoritative TTL as well as all observations with popular fixed TTL values 0 1 9 10 11 30 60 80 100 300 1000 10000 4 Exclude all responses from DNS forwarders that ever return a wrong answer We also excluded all responses from a DNS forwarder if it ever returned an incorrect IP address in a response for the query 5 Exclude all responses from caches in same country as domain name hosted For a given domain name we excluded all DNS cache responses coming from DNS forwarders for ASNs in the same country where the domain name was hosted For instance if a domain name pointed to an IP address in Italy we would exclude all DNS cache hits from Italy on that domain name as potential false positives 22 CITIZEN LAB RESEARCH REPORT NO 113 6 Exclude infrequent responses Unless resolvers in a given ASN returned at least four responses for a given domain that were not otherwise excluded we excluded the responses for that domain from the ASN Our conditions for excluding results were very liberal and could result in false negatives Note that when we say we excluded a response we mean that the response was not included as a final result We continued to consider excluded responses as reasons to exclude other responses Why Is a Domain Name in the Cache There are many reasons a domain name may be in a cache assuming we did not accidentally put it there We are only interested in cache entries that might arise from suspected infections We briefly introduce our working model of how NSO’s Pegasus spyware deployments operate supported by evidence from a staged shutdown of NSO Group’s infrastructure Our mental model of deployment of the Pegasus spyware is that most operators have two C C servers to which most infections talk and that the rest of their infrastructure comprises domains that are used in exploit links After reports concerning the use of Pegasus spyware were published by Amnesty International and Citizen Lab on August 1 2018 a staged shutdown of the Pegasus infrastructure was conducted over a period of several days At first the bulk of frontend domains appeared to be shut down while a handful of final domains usually two remained active for each operator We believe that these were the C C servers and that the domains were kept online so that infected devices would have an opportunity to beacon back and receive instructions on new C C servers with which they should communicate If a given operator had exactly two final domains we assumed that these were C C servers If an operator had more than two final domains we assumed that some subset of size 2 were the C C servers We did not identify any operator for which our DNS cache probing technique reported hits on different subsets of size 2 from the final domains We then filtered our responses for ASNs which had hits on both hypothesized C C domains and considered these to be suspected infections The Experiments Once we had developed our technique for reducing false positives we DNS cache probed for all domains we linked to NSO Group’s infrastructure that were active 23 HIDE AND SEEK and matching our fingerprints We queried domains at least once per their period of authoritative TTL Because of the large number of domains and servers and our desire to conserve bandwidth we alternated which domains we were probing Each domain name was probed for at least three 24-hour periods Possible Limitations Factors such as the use of VPNs and satellite Internet connections may skew our geolocation results Thus the country mapping should serve as a guide for further investigation rather than ironclad evidence of monitoring Additionally it is possible that unusual configurations of DNS forwarders such as the use of consistent hashing to consult different resolvers for different domain names could defeat our filtering techniques and introduce false positives We are not sure what percentage of all DNS queries are observable by our method and note that the percentage could vary greatly across different countries and ISPs Therefore it is possible that our technique has missed a significant number of infections and may have failed to measure certain countries or ISPs entirely Importantly operators that appear in our results to be operating in a single country may actually be operating in multiple countries We did not conduct any DNS cache probing of IPs in Mainland China 5 Conclusion This report identifies 45 countries with suspected Pegasus spyware infections operated by at least 33 likely NSO customers We determined this by performing DNS cache probing on domain names we extracted from command and control C C servers matching a newly devised fingerprint for Pegasus We grouped the C C servers with each group representing a single Pegasus operator assumed to be an NSO customer using a technique that we call Athena The resulting global map of NSO Pegasus infections reveals several issues of urgent concern Known spyware abusers operating Pegasus While some NSO customers may be using Pegasus spyware as part of ‘lawful’ criminal or national security investigations investigations at least six countries 24 CITIZEN LAB RESEARCH REPORT NO 113 with significant Pegasus operations have a public history of abusing spyware to target civil society Three Pegasus operators appear to be operational in Mexico despite the extensive evidence of abuses of Pegasus to target Mexican civil society uncovered by Citizen Lab and our partners in 2017 The findings of widespread targeting in Mexico led to international outcry and a criminal investigation However they do not appear to have resulted in the termination of all of the Pegasus operations in that country In 2016 Citizen Lab exposed the use of Pegasus to target Ahmed Mansoor a UAEbased human rights defender Despite this disclosure and resulting public outcry it appears that a suspected UAE-based Pegasus deployment remains operational Most recently a Saudi Arabia-linked campaign appears to be continuing despite a recent investigation linking it to the targeting of an Amnesty International staff member and a Saudi activist Bahrain another country that may host a Pegasus operator has a notorious history of abusing spyware to target civil society Notably the operator linked to Bahrain appears to be using domain names with political themes which is highly concerning given that country’s history of abuses of surveillance technology The Togo-linked operator also appears to be using politically-themed domains Togo has a history of authoritarian rule and human rights abuses Widespread cross-border surveillance with Pegasus Ten Pegasus operators appear to be conducting surveillance in multiple countries While we have observed prior cases of cross-border targeting this investigation suggests that cross-border targeting and or monitoring is a relatively common practice The scope of this activity suggests that government-exclusive spyware is widely used to conduct activities that may be illegal in the countries where the targets are located For example we have identified several possible Pegasus customers not linked to the United States but with infections in US IP space While some of these infections may reflect usage of out-of-country VPN or satellite Internet service by targets it is possible that several countries may be actively violating United States law by penetrating devices located within the US 25 HIDE AND SEEK Failures at due diligence contribution to global cyber insecurity The cases identified in this report raise serious doubts as to the depth and seriousness of NSO’s due diligence and concern for human rights protections They also suggest that the company has a significant number of customers that maintain active infections in other countries likely violating those countries laws The global market for government exclusive spyware continues to grow and as it does more governments and security services with histories of abuse will acquire this technology The expanding user base of spyware like Pegasus will enable a growing number of authoritarian states to pry into into the digital lives of their own citizens but also into phones and computers in pockets and purses around the globe Communications with NSO Group On 14 September 2018 Citizen Lab Director Ron Deibert sent a letter to two NSO Group principals Mr Omri Lavrie and Mr Shalev Hulio notifying them of the details of this report explaining that we had shared an embargoed copy with journalists and offering to publish in full any response they wished to communicate on the record On 14 September 2018 Mr Hulio responded by email saying “we have suggested several times in the past to meet you and your colleagues but unfortunately our requests have been ignored ” The Citizen Lab Director and staff have no record of any such outreach Moreover the Citizen Lab does not believe that a private meeting with researchers is a proper substitute for responsible public communication on such a serious matter of public interest Mr Hulio also claimed “Contrary to statements made by you our product is licensed to government and law enforcement agencies for the sole purpose of investigating and preventing crime and terror Our business is conducted in strict compliance with applicable export control laws ” Citizen Lab research does not speak to what statements NSO may make during marketing sales or export compliance However our research continues to demonstrate some highly concerning real-world examples of the abuse of NSO Group technology in practice These uses have included apparent government customers of NSO Group abusing Pegasus spyware to target civil society groups human rights defenders lawyers politicians and journalists 26 CITIZEN LAB RESEARCH REPORT NO 113 On 17 September 2018 we then received a public statement from NSO Group The statement mentions that “the list of countries in which NSO is alleged to operate is simply inaccurate NSO does not operate in many of the countries listed ” This statement is a misunderstanding of our investigation the list in our report is of suspected locations of NSO infections it is not a list of suspected NSO customers As we describe in Section 3 we observed DNS cache hits from what appear to be 33 distinct operators some of whom appeared to be conducting operations in multiple countries Thus our list of 45 countries necessarily includes countries that are not NSO Group customers We describe additional limitations of our method in Section 4 including factors such as VPNs and satellite connections which can cause targets to appear in other countries The NSO statement also claims the “NSO’s Business Ethics Committee which includes outside experts from various disciplines including law and foreign relations reviews and approves each transaction and is authorized to reject agreements or cancel existing agreements where there is a case of improper use ” We have seen no public details concerning the membership or deliberations of this committee but encourage NSO Group to disclose them NSO’s statements about a Business Ethics Committee recall the example of Hacking Team’s “outside panel of technical experts and legal advisors … that reviews potential sales ” This “outside panel” appears to have been a single law firm whose recommendations Hacking Team did not always follow The continued supply of services to countries with problematic human rights track records and where highly-publicized abuses of spyware have occurred raise serious doubts about the effectiveness of this internal mechanism if it exists at all Update On 18 September 2018 NSO emailed the following addendum to their previous public statement “There are multiple problems with Citizen Lab’s latest report Most significantly the list of countries in which NSO is alleged to sell or where our customers presumably operate the products is simply inaccurate NSO does not sell its products in many of the countries listed The product is only licensed to operate in countries approved under our Business Ethics Framework and the product will not operate outside of approved countries As an example the product is specifically designed to not operate in the USA ” 27 HIDE AND SEEK In addition to our DNS cache probing technique showing suspected infections in the United States we previously observed a suspected Mexican operator target a minor child in the United States with Pegasus infection attempts including messages impersonating the US embassy Also as part of our Million Dollar Dissident report in 2016 we successfully infected our test phone in the United States at the time with a Pegasus link sent to UAE activist Ahmed Mansoor 28 CITIZEN LAB RESEARCH REPORT NO 113 Appendix A Interesting Domains and ASNs of DNS Cache Hits by Operator In this appendix we list DNS cache hits by ASN for all systems in which we observed them We list some domain names for systems which may be used for political targeting but redact domain names in other cases as other systems may be used for legitimate law enforcement purposes Operator RECKLESS-1 Interesting Domains universopolitico net animal-politico com un0noticias com un0noticias net Why interesting May show political focus Uno TV is a Mexican provider of news The domain name unonoticias net was previously used to target Mexican journalists with Pegasus spyware Table 1 Interesting domains for operator RECKLESS-1 Operator RECKLESS-2 Interesting Domains noticiaspoliticos com politicoportales org Why interesting May show political focus Table 2 Interesting domains for operator RECKLESS-2 Operator MAYBERECKLESS ASN Description Country 8151 Uninet S A de C V Mexico 13999 Mega Cable S A de C V Mexico 17072 TOTAL PLAY TELECOMUNICACIONES SA DE CV Mexico 6503 Axtel S A B de C V Mexico 18734 Operbes S A de C V Mexico Table 3 Suspected infections for operator MAYBERECKLESS 29 HIDE AND SEEK Operator PRICKLYPEAR ASN Description Country 8151 Uninet S A de C V Mexico 11888 Television Internacional S A de C V Mexico 17072 TOTAL PLAY TELECOMUNICACIONES SA DE CV Mexico 13999 Mega Cable S A de C V Mexico 6503 Axtel S A B de C V Mexico 28548 Cablevisión S A de C V Mexico 11172 Alestra S de R L de C V Mexico 22773 Cox Communications Inc USA Arizona 7922 Comcast Cable Communications LLC USA Arizona Table 4 Suspected infections for operator PRICKLYPEAR Operator AGUILAREAL ASN Description Country 8151 Uninet S A de C V Mexico 6503 Axtel S A B de C V Mexico 17072 TOTAL PLAY TELECOMUNICACIONES SA DE CV Mexico Table 5 Suspected infections for operator AGUILAREAL Operator ORZELBIALY ASN Description Country 8374 Polkomtel Sp z o o Poland 50767 FIBERLINK Sp z o o Poland 5617 Orange Polska Spolka Akcyjna Poland 12912 T-mobile Polska Spolka Akcyjna Poland 198112 PROSAT s c Poland 29314 Vectra S A Poland 12741 Netia SA Poland Table 6 Suspected infections for operator ORZELBIALY 30 CITIZEN LAB RESEARCH REPORT NO 113 Operator EDELWEISS ASN Description 3303 Country Swisscom Switzerland Ltd Switzerland Table 7 Suspected infections for operator EDELWEISS Operator 5LATS ASN Description 12578 SIA Lattelecom Country Latvia Table 8 Suspected infections for operator 5LATS Operator REDLIONS ASN Description 24691 Country TogoTelecom Togo Togo Table 9 Suspected infections for operator REDLIONS Interesting Domains Why interesting politiques-infos info nouveau-president com May show political focus Table 10 Interesting domains for operator REDLIONS Operator ATLAS ASN Description Country 6713 Itissalat Al-MAGHRIB Morocco 37705 Topnet Tunisia 36947 Telecom Algeria Algeria 3215 Orange France 36925 Orange Maroc Morocco 8220 COLT Technology Services Group Limited France 5410 Bouygues Telecom SA France 2609 Tunisia BackBone AS Tunisia 31 HIDE AND SEEK ASN Description Country 15557 SFR SA France 29571 Orange Cote D’ivoire Cote D’ivoire 5384 Emirates Telecommunications Corporation UAE Table 11 Suspected infections for operator ATLAS Interesting Domains revolution-news co Why interesting May indicate political themes in targeting Table 12 Interesting domains for operator ATLAS Operator GRANDLACS ASN Description Country 20294 MTN- Uganda 29975 VODACOM- South Africa 2905 TICSA-ASN South Africa 5713 SAIX-NET South Africa 37061 Safaricom Kenya 36890 MTNRW-ASN Rwanda 37228 Olleh-Rwanda-Networks Rwanda 37027 SIMBANET-AS Kenya Table 13 Suspected infections for operator GRANDLACS Interesting Domains politicalpress org Why interesting May indicate political themes in targeting Table 14 Interesting domains for operator GRANDLACS Operator MULUNGUSHI ASN Description Country 36962 MTN Zambia Zambia 3741 IS South Africa Table 15 Suspected infections for operator MULUNGUSHI 32 CITIZEN LAB RESEARCH REPORT NO 113 Operator FALCON ASN Description Country 5384 Emirates Telecommunications Corporation UAE 15802 Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Company PJSC EITC-DU UAE Table 16 Suspected infections for operator FALCON Interesting Domains nomorewarnow com Why interesting May indicate anti-war themes in the targeting UAE is currently engaged in military operations in Yemen Table 17 Interesting domains for operator FALCON Operator BABYFALCON ASN Description Country 5384 Emirates Telecommunications Corporation UAE 15802 Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Company PJSC EITC-DU UAE Table 18 Suspected infections for operator BABYFALCON Operator MAYBEFALCON ASN 5384 Description Country Emirates Telecommunications Corporation UAE Table 19 Suspected infections for operator MAYBEFALCON Operator PEARL ASN Description Country 51375 VIVA Bahrain BSC Closed Bahrain 5416 Bahrain Telecommunications Company BATELCO B S C Bahrain 39015 Mena Broadband Services WLL Bahrain 8781 Ooredoo Q S C Qatar Table 20 Suspected infections for operator PEARL 33 HIDE AND SEEK Interesting Domains Why interesting 14-tracking com May be a reference to the 2011 Bahrain protests which started on Feb 14 The February 14 Youth Coalition is an ongoing presence in anti-government demonstrations shia-voice com May indicate targeting of the Shia community a community targeted for political persecution by the Bahraini Government Table 21 Interesting domains for operator PEARL Operator KINGDOM ASN Description Country 8781 Ooredoo Q S C Qatar 43766 MTC KSA Saudi Arabia 25019 Saudi Telecom Company JSC Saudi Arabia 35819 Bayanat Al-Oula For Network Services Saudi Arabia 48832 Linkdotnet-Jordan Jordan 8376 Jordan Data Communications Company LLC Jordan 24863 LINKdotNET Egypt 8452 TE-AS Egypt 24835 RAYA Telecom – Egypt Egypt 9051 IncoNet Data Management sal Lebanon 42003 Libantelecom Lebanon 6713 Itissalat Al-MAGHRIB Morocco 2856 British Telecommunications PLC UK 5769 Videotron Telecom Ltee Canada Quebec 376 Reseau d’informations scientifiques du Quebec RISQ Canada Quebec 9121 Turk Telekom Turkey 203217 Horizon Scope Mobile Telecom WLL Iraq 50597 ScopeSky Communication and Internet Ltd Iraq 3215 Orange France 5416 Bahrain Telecommunications Company BATELCO B S C Bahrain 51375 VIVA Bahrain BSC Closed Bahrain Table 22 Suspected infections for operator KINGDOM 34 CITIZEN LAB RESEARCH REPORT NO 113 Interesting Domains Why interesting social-life info Amnesty observed this targeted at a Saudi activist abroad Another target possibly in Qatar the Qatar link went viral on WhatsApp and Twitter akhbar-arabia com Targeted at an Amnesty Researcher Table 23 Interesting domains for operator KINGDOM Operator MIDDLE ASN Description 42003 Libantelecom Country Lebanon 8781 Ooredoo Q S C Qatar 8529 Oman Telecommunications Company S A O G Oman 50010 Omani Qatari Telecommunications Company SAOC Oman 5384 Emirates Telecommunications Corporation UAE 9121 Turk Telekom Turkey 12670 Completel France 48832 Linkdotnet-Jordan Jordan 2609 Tunisia BackBone AS Tunisia Table 24 Suspected infections for operator MIDDLE Operator DOME ASN Description Country 9121 Turk Telekom Turkey 1680 013 NetVision Ltd Israel 8551 Bezeq International Israel 12849 Hot-Net internet services Ltd Israel 15975 Hadara Palestine 12975 Palestine Telecommunications Company PALTEL Palestine 51407 Mada ALArab LTD Palestine 8781 Ooredoo Q S C Qatar 8737 KPN B V Netherlands 7922 Comcast Cable Communications LLC USA Southeast Florida Table 25 Suspected infections for operator DOME 35 HIDE AND SEEK Operator OLIVE-1 ASN Description 1680 Country 013 NetVision Ltd Israel Table 26 Suspected infections for operator OLIVE-1 Operator OLIVE-2 ASN Description Country 16116 Pelephone Communications Ltd Israel 1680 013 NetVision Ltd Israel 9116 012 Smile Communications LTD Israel Table 27 Suspected infections for operator OLIVE-2 Operator OLIVE-3 ASN Description Country 16116 Pelephone Communications Ltd Israel 9116 012 Smile Communications LTD Israel Table 28 Suspected infections for operator OLIVE-3 Operator OLIVE-4 ASN Description Country 16116 Pelephone Communications Ltd Israel 8551 Bezeq International Israel Table 29 Suspected infections for operator OLIVE-4 36 CITIZEN LAB RESEARCH REPORT NO 113 Operator BLACKBIRD ASN Description Country 8781 Ooredoo Q S C Qatar 5089 Virgin Media Limited UK 5607 Sky UK Limited UK 6799 OTEnet S A Greece 15802 Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Company PJSC EITC-DU UAE 5384 Emirates Telecommunications Corporation UAE 30873 Public Telecommunication Corporation Yemen 9038 Batelco Jordan Jordan 21003 GPTC Autonomous System Tripoli Libya Libya 21050 Fast Telecommunications Company W L L Kuwait 56478 Hyperoptic Ltd UK 3225 Gulfnet Kuwait Kuwait 20001 Time Warner Cable Internet LLC USA Southern California Table 30 Suspected infections for operator BLACKBIRD Operator CHANG ASN Description Country 131090 CAT TELECOM Public Company Ltd CAT Thailand 7470 TRUE INTERNET Co Ltd Thailand 9931 The Communication Authoity of Thailand CAT Thailand Table 31 Suspected infections for operator CHANG 37 HIDE AND SEEK Operator GANGES ASN Description Country 9498 BHARTI Airtel Ltd India 24560 Bharti Airtel Ltd Telemedia Services India 18209 Atria Convergence Technologies pvt ltd India 17813 Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited India 9829 National Internet Backbone India 17488 Hathway IP Over Cable Internet India 38571 Star Broadband Services India 7738 Telemar Norte Leste S A Brazil 45595 Pakistan Telecom Company Limited Pakistan 45609 Bharti Airtel Ltd AS for GPRS Service India 4657 StarHub Internet Exchange Singapore 45588 Bangladesh Telecommunications Company Limited BTCL Nationwide Bangladesh Table 32 Suspected infections for operator GANGES Interesting Domains signpetition co Why interesting May indicate political themes in the targeting Table 33 Interesting domains for operator GANGES Operator MERLION ASN Description Country 4773 MobileOne Ltd Mobile Internet Service Provider Singapore Singapore 9506 Singtel Fibre Broadband Singapore 10091 StarHub Cable Vision Ltd Singapore Table 34 Suspected infections for operator MERLION 38 CITIZEN LAB RESEARCH REPORT NO 113 Operator SYRDARYA ASN Description Country 8193 Uzbektelekom Joint Stock Company Uzbekistan 34250 Uzbektelecom Joint-Stock Company Uzbekistan 41750 Mega-Line Ltd Kyrgyzstan 8449 ElCat Ltd Kyrgyzstan 41329 SkyMobile LTD Kyrgyzstan 29061 Saimanet Telecomunications Kyrgyzstan 47139 Cjsc Indigo Tajikistan Tajikistan 206026 Kar-Tel LLC Kazakhstan 9121 Turk Telekom Turkey 24722 LLC Babilon-T Tajikistan 59668 PE Turon Media Uzbekistan 12735 TurkNet Iletisim Hizmetleri A S Turkey 9198 JSC Kazakhtelecom Kazakhstan 34718 LLC texnoprosistem Uzbekistan 47452 Super iMAX Uzbekistan 12365 Sarkor-Telecom Uzbekistan 31203 Sharq Telekom CJSC Uzbekistan 50025 Net Television Ltd Uzbekistan Table 35 Suspected infections for operator SYRDARYA Operator TULPAR ASN Description Country 29555 Mobile Telecom-Service LLP Kazakhstan 9198 JSC Kazakhtelecom Kazakhstan Table 36 Suspected infections for operator TULPAR 39