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Spyware startup Variston is losing staff — some say it’s closing


In July 2021, someone sent Google a batch of malicious code that could be used to hack Chrome, Firefox, and PCs running Windows Defender. That code was

While its website lists another address in the city, Variston most recently worked out of an office in the Barcelona neighborhood of Poble Nou, inside a co-working space located one block from the beach. As of 2019, Protect was headed by Awad Al Shamsi, and was providing “UAE government users with discreet access to foreign cyber technology,” reported Intelligence Online. In 2007, along with Italian spyware maker RCS Lab, AGT worked with the Syrian government to develop a centralized real-time country-wide internet monitoring system, according to news reports based on leaked documents and research by non-profit Privacy International.

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