Researchers discover attempt to infect leading Egyptian opposition politician with Predator spyware

By FRANK BAJAK
AP Technology Writer

BOSTON (AP) — Cybersecurity researchers say a leading Egyptian opposition politician was targeted with Predator spyware after announcing a president bid. They say it’s highly likely Egyptian authorities were behind the hacking  attempt. Its discovery by researchers at Citizen Lab and Google prompted Apple to rush out operating system updates for iPhones, iPads, Mac computers and Apple Watches to patch the vulnerability. Citizen Lab said in a blog post Friday that attempts in August and September to hack former lawmaker Ahmed Altantawy were engineered by configuring his connection on the Vodaphone Egypt mobile network to automatically infect his devices if he visited certain websites not using the secure HTTPS protocol.