PrivacyHigh
Serbian Authorities Allegedly Used AI-Powered Cellebrite Tools to Unlock Journalist’s Phone and Install Spyware
- Occurred
- Dec 16, 2024
- Published
- Feb 28, 2025
- Source
- AI Incident Database
Summary
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.
Developers
- Serbian Security Information Agency (BIA)
- Cellebrite
- Surveillance technology developers
Deployers
- Serbian Security Information Agency (BIA)
- Serbian police
- Government of Serbia
Harmed parties
- Slaviša Milanov
- Nikola Ristić
- 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
Tags
- Surveillance
- State repression
- Spyware
- Phone hacking
- Digital forensics
- AI-powered hacking
- Journalism
- Environmentalism
- Government surveillance
- Cellebrite
- Amnesty International
- Intelligence services
- Serbian intelligence
- Security exploits
- Mobile device hacking
Classification
Category confidence: 90%
Severity confidence: 85%
Rationale: Unauthorized surveillance and data extraction by authorities using AI tools constitutes a serious privacy violation with regulatory and legal implications.
Classifier: Qwen/Qwen3.5-35B-A3B-FP8