Hack of Egyptian presidential candidate’s iPhone tied to tech firm Sandvine

Attempts to hack the iPhone of a presidential candidate in Egypt have been linked to the computer networking company Sandvine Inc., whose equipment has previously been used by Belarus and other countries to censor the internet.

Ahmed Eltantawy, a prominent opposition politician, was repeatedly targeted with spyware between May and September after he announced his plans to run in Egypt’s 2024 presidential elections, according to an analysis from the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab. After conducting a forensic examination of the device, the researchers concluded with “high confidence” that the Egyptian government was behind the attempted hacks.

His phone blocked the hacking attempts because it was in a “lockdown mode,” but it turned out he had been successfully infected two years earlier with a spyware known as Predator, manufactured by North Macedonian surveillance technology firm Cytrox, the researchers found.