Today, the US Treasury Department (OFAC) placed companies and their key shareholders under strict sanctions due to the production and marketing of the eavesdropping software Predator.
Among them a company based in Greece, Intellexa, and two individuals who engaged the media after the revelation of the wiretapping scandal.
Specifically, the US sanctions concern Tal Dilian, founder of the Intellexa consortium, and his wife Sara Aleksandra Fayssal Hamou, who holds a leading role in Intellexa. The sanctions also target five Intellexa consortium companies:
- of the Greek Intellexa which, according to the US announcement, “exports its monitoring tools to authoritarian regimes”,
- of Intellexa Limited, a company based in Ireland that acts as a technology reseller and holds assets on behalf of the consortium
- of Cytrox AD based in North Macedonia which acts as the developer of the Predator software
- of Cytrox Holdings Zartkoruen Mukodo Reszvenytarsasag (Cytrox Holdings ZRT) based in Hungary which originally created the tracking software and
- of Ireland’s Thalestris Limited which holds the distribution rights to Predator and acts as a financial holding company for the consortium
According to the announcement of the US Department of Finance, the sanctions can be extended to other collaborators in the wiretapping scandal.
All assets of the aforementioned persons and companies, which are either located in the US or owned or controlled by US nationals are “frozen” and must be reported to OFAC.
Companies that are owned, directly or indirectly, individually or in total, by 50% or more by the persons in question, are also subject to sanctions.
Greek partners
Other companies and other persons involved or involved in transactions or activities with Tal Dilian, Sara Hamou and Intellexa SA, Intellexa Limited, Cytrox AD, Cytrox Holdings Zartkoruen and Thalestris may be subject to sanctions. This also concerns their Greek partners who deal with the persons who were placed under sanctions.
“The prohibitions include making any contribution or provision of funds, goods or services by, to or for the benefit of any specified person, or receiving any contribution or provision of funds, goods or services from any such person,” the OFAC statement said.
The same statement states that “the proliferation of commercial spyware poses distinct and growing risks to the security of the United States and has been abused by foreign actors to enable human rights abuses and the targeting of dissidents around the world for repression and retaliation.” ».
Regarding Predator, the statement reads: “Since its founding in 2019, the Intellexa consortium has acted as a marketing agency for a variety of ‘aggressive’ cyber entities that offer commercial spyware and monitoring tools to enable targeted and mass surveillance campaigns. These tools are packaged as a suite of Predator-branded tools, which can infiltrate a range of electronic devices through zero-click attacks that require no user interaction to infect the device with spyware. Once a device is infected with Predator spyware, the spyware can be leveraged for a variety of information-stealing and monitoring capabilities—this includes unauthorized data extraction, geolocation tracking, and access to a variety of apps and personal information on the compromised device ».
The announcement of the US Department of the Treasury
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