By Jeph Ajobaju, Chief Copy Editor
A software that monitors telephone calls and text messages is being used by Nigeria’s Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) to spy on citizens, and at least two governors in the South South have deployed it against their political opponents.
The report comes as Abuja doubles down on agitation, including protest against insecurity that enabled Boko Haram to abduct 333 secondary school students in Muhammadu Buhari’s home state of Katsina on December 11.
He was in Daura last Friday when the abductions took place, and will remain there for what his spokesman, Garba Shehu, says is a private visit for one week.
On Monday, Buhari visited his ranch in Daura – where social media footage showed him inspecting his cattle – but has yet to show up at Government Science Secondary School, Kankara where the boys were kidnapped.
Kankara is 119 kilometres away from Daura.
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EndSARS protesters are still counting their losses after Buhari gave orders to the military to shoot at them at Lekki toll gate in Lagos in October. Amnesty International counted 12 youths killed for demanding an end to police brutality.
The bank accounts of some of the survivors of the massacre have been frozen.
And on top of plans to curtail public conversation through bills on hate speech and social media comes the report by the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, which researches digital surveillance, security, privacy, and accountability.
The report, titled Running in Circles: Uncovering the Clients of Cyber-espionage Firm Circles, said Circles – a telecom surveillance company – is helping state security apparatuses in 25 countries, including Nigeria, to spy on the communications of opposition figures, journalists, and protesters.
The report by Citizen Lab, quoted by Al Jazeera, said Circles is affiliated with NSO Group, an Israeli hacker-for-hire company based in Tel-Aviv, whose software, Pegasus, is used by several governments to spy on dissidents by taking control of their smartphone, its cameras and microphones, and mining the user’s personal data.
Circles, on the other hand, is known for selling systems to exploit Signalling System 7 (SS7) vulnerabilities and claims to have sold the technology to several countries, according to the report.
SS7 is a system that allows one mobile network to connect with another.
“Unlike NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware, the SS7 mechanism by which Circles’ product reportedly operates does not have an obvious signature on a target’s phone,” Citizen Lab explained.
The report said Pegasus and Circles products could possibly be integrated.
But, according to the report, there is limited information on how the Circles system integrates with NSO Group’s flagship Pegasus spyware, though a former NSO Group employee told Motherboard that Pegasus had an “awful integration with Circles” and that Circles had “exaggerated their system’s abilities.”
Governors in on the spy game
The report added that at least two entities in Nigeria have deployed Circles’ product.
“One system may be operated by the same entity as one of the Nigerian customers of the FinFisher spyware that we detected in December 2014,” said the report.
“The other client appears to be the Nigerian Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA), as its firewall IPs are in AS37258, a block of IP addresses registered to ‘“HQ Defence Intelligence Agency Asokoro, Nigeria, Abuja.”’
The report referred to an investigation by Premium Times which concluded that two governors “had purchased systems from Circles to spy on their political opponents.”
The reported added: “In Delta State, Premium Times reports that the system was installed … and operated by employees of the governor, rather than police.”
“In Bayelsa State, the governor reportedly used the Circles system to spy on his opponent in an election, as well as his opponent’s wife and aides.
“The investigation also found that the two Circles systems were imported without the proper authorisations from Nigeria’s Office of the National Security Adviser.”
Hacking software
Earlier this year, an Israeli court rejected a request to strip the NSO Group of its export licence over the suspected use of the company’s technology to target journalists and dissidents worldwide.
The case, brought by Amnesty International in January, asked the court to prevent NSO from selling its technology abroad, especially to repressive governments.
While NSO does not disclose its clients, the Israeli company’s cellphone-hacking software, Pegasus, has been linked to political surveillance in Mexico, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, according to Citizen Lab.
Last year, WhatsApp, owned by Facebook, sued NSO in a United States federal court in San Francisco, accusing it of helping government spies break into the phones of about 1,400 users across four continents.
Targets of the alleged hacking spree included diplomats, political dissidents, journalists and senior government officials.
NSO denied the allegations, saying it only “provides technology to licensed government intelligence and law enforcement agencies to help them fight terrorism and serious crime.”
