Serbian Authorities Allegedly Used AI-Powered Cellebrite Tools to Unlock Journalist’s Phone and Install Spyware
Description
Serbian authorities allegedly used Cellebrite's AI-powered forensic tools to unlock journalists' and activists' phones without consent. They reportedly then installed NoviSpy, a newly discovered spyware. That then purportedly allowed covert data extraction, remote microphone and camera activation, and surveillance. Amnesty International uncovered forensic evidence linking Serbia's Security Information Agency (BIA) to these attacks. Cellebrite halted sales to Serbia after the report.
Actors
Alleged Deployers
- serbian-security-information-agency-(bia)
- serbian-police
- government-of-serbia
Alleged Developers
- serbian-security-information-agency-(bia)
- cellebrite
- surveillance-technology-developers
Harmed Parties
- slavisa-milanov
- nikola-ristic
- krokodil
- journalists-in-serbia
- human-rights-defenders-in-serbia
- environmental-activists-in-serbia
- dissidents-in-serbia
- civil-society-organizations-in-serbia
- privacy
- general-public
- general-public-of-serbia
Classification
Risk Domain
Malicious Actors & MisuseRisk Subdomain
4.1. Disinformation, surveillance, and influence at scale
MIT Risk Profile
Source
Related Incidents (Malicious Actors & Misuse)
View all →Female Students at Westfield High School in New Jersey Reportedly Targeted with Deepfake Nudes
Oct 2023
ChatGPT Was Alleged to Have Aided Planning of Florida State University Mass Shooting
Apr 2025
Ongoing Purported AI-Assisted Identity Fraud Enables Unauthorized Access to Western Companies by North Korean IT Workers
Research Papers on This Topic
How Johnny Can Persuade LLMs to Jailbreak Them: Rethinking Persuasion to Challenge AI Safety by Humanizing LLMs
AgentHarm: A Benchmark for Measuring Harmfulness of LLM Agents
Regulating ChatGPT and other Large Generative AI Models
Great, Now Write an Article About That: The Crescendo Multi-Turn LLM Jailbreak Attack