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WASHINGTON: Israeli digital advertising agency Discover-Tech spied on internet users through a sprawling network of online ads \u200bthat it used to track targets and help hack their devices, two research groups said.<\/strong><\/p>\n Its services gave Israel\u2019s Candiru \u2014 a spyware company blacklisted by the US government \u2014 as \u200cwell as other Israeli surveillance firms access to advertising platforms run by Google, Comcast, Russia\u2019s Yandex and others, according to separate, reports, from Canadian cyber watchdog group Citizen Lab and New York advertising security firm Confiant.<\/p>\n The reports show how the online advertising business, long a subject of privacy concerns, can also serve as a channel for sweeping espionage campaigns.<\/p>\n \u201cThe way online advertising works today is a systemic security threat,\u201d Wolfie Christl, a senior researcher at Citizen Lab, told Reuters. \u201cFor states, the private sector, civil \u200bsociety and everyone else alike.\u201d<\/p>\n Discover-Tech\u2019s online ads \u2014 often for ordinary products such as phones or earbuds \u2014 reached more than 120,000 websites and 75,000 apps through its various partnerships, Citizen Lab said.<\/p>\n Users who \u200bvisited sites or used apps with the malicious ads could be identified and tracked by Discover-Tech, which would sometimes also try to extract phone numbers from \u2060some smartphone users, the researchers said. Ads only needed to load on a website for the spying to occur.<\/p>\n Some ads would be used to help plant spyware from Candiru on users\u2019 devices, both research groups \u200bsaid, though Confiant said that ads it tied to Candiru were a tiny fraction of Discover-Tech\u2019s overall volume.<\/p>\n Confiant cofounder Jerome Dangu said Discover-Tech was pumping out at least \u200b10 million ads per day all around the world and that data-sharing arrangements \u2014 called cookie matching \u2014 allowed it to track people even beyond the reach of its advertisements.<\/p>\n \u201cVery likely hundreds of millions of people would have been touched by Discover-Tech,\u201d Dangu said.<\/p>\n Discover-Tech, which was founded in 2020, did not return messages left via its contact form. A LinkedIn message and emails sent to its chief executive, Dekel Boni, were not returned.<\/p>\n Reuters\u2019 attempts to reach Candiru\u2019s owners were similarly unsuccessful. The \u200bUS Commerce Department blacklisted Candiru in 2021 for allegedly supplying spyware that was used to maliciously target government officials, journalists, activists and academics.<\/p>\n Citizen Lab said a powerful form of Candiru spyware delivered through Discover-Tech\u2019s ads had \u200bbeen used to compromise 45 Windows devices at the Qatari broadcaster Al Jazeera between 2024 and 2025, something it said it was able to confirm because the media group had shared its network logs with the group.<\/p>\nMALICIOUS ADS SHOWN IN HUNDREDS OF SENSITIVE NETWORKS<\/h2>\n