Israeli cyber attack on Al Jazeera

A western media reported that the Israeli regime was spying on Al Jazeera journalists using propaganda technology.

According to Ambassador Arjan, a report from the Citizen Lab research group affiliated with the University of Toronto shows that the Israeli company Discoverek has installed advanced spyware on at least 45 devices belonging to Al Jazeera network employees by abusing the digital advertising infrastructure. The attack, which took place in 2024 and 2025, has raised concerns about the safety of journalists and the privacy of users.

According to this report, attackers have used a method called AdFection, which allows devices to be infected by displaying online advertisements. In this method, unlike common Internet attacks, the user does not need to click on the ad or perform any specific action, and the target device can be infected simply by loading an ad.

Researchers have described the operation as the first in which, technically speaking, the delivery of commercial spyware for rent via targeted advertising has been verified using a so-called zero-click method.

Discovertech, which presented itself as a mainstream digital advertising company, had developed a platform called Controlium. According to the researchers, this platform allowed spyware companies, including Condero, now known as Integrity Labs, to identify targeted devices and infiltrate them through regular advertisements.

Ads related to the company were displayed on more than 120,000 websites and 75,000 apps, and were used to identify and categorize millions of devices, the report said.

Al-Jazeera network has considered this action as an attack on the freedom of the press and demanded the accountability of its perpetrators. After the research findings were published, Google and several other advertising platforms cut off DiscoverTech's access to their services.

This case shows that the vast infrastructure of Internet advertising, if misused, can become a tool for espionage operations; A method that is difficult for normal users to detect, as contamination may occur without direct clicks or interaction.