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How a Russian man’s harrowing tale shows the physical dangers of spyware. Citizen Lab and a Russian exile-led human rights group investigated spyware implanted on his phone after he was detained, beaten up and released.

Citizen Lab and a Russian exile-led human rights group investigated spyware implanted on his phone after he was detained, beaten up and released.

Six or seven Russian police officers had knocked on his Moscow apartment door in April, entered while wearing masks and holding automatic weapons, and started interrogating him about how he and his wife had helped supply aid to people in Ukraine suffering from the war’s devastation. They stationed him near a cold window without clothes, made him sing the national anthem of the Russian Republic, forced him to sit and stand repeatedly, and threatened to kill him and his wife. He believed that when the authorities had taken his device and forced him to give up the credentials, they loaded it with spyware before returning it to him at the Lubyanka building, the headquarters of the Russian Federal Security Service, more commonly known as the FSB.

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