US Sanctions Intellexa Commercial Spyware Consortium

The United States has imposed sanctions on two individuals and five entities associated with the Intellexa Consortium for their role in developing, operating, and distributing commercial spyware technology misused to target Americans, including U.S. Government officials, journalists, and policy experts.

Intellexa S.A., a Greece-based software development company; Intellexa Limited, an Ireland-based company; Cytrox AD, a North Macedonia-based company; Cytrox Holdings Zartkoruen Mukodo Reszvenytarsasag (Cytrox Holdings ZRT), a Hungary-based entity; and Thalestris Limited, which is an Ireland-based entity, are the firms that have been targeted. All these companies are within the Intellexa Consortium.

Tal Jonathan Dilian, who is the founder of the Intellexa Consortium; and Sara Aleksandra Fayssal Hamou, who is a corporate off-shoring specialist who has provided managerial services to the Consortium, are the individuals designated by the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).

“Today’s designations aim to discourage the misuse of surveillance tools and reflect U.S. Government efforts to establish clear guardrails for the responsible development and use of these technologies aligned with the protection of human rights and democratic values around the world,” State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a statement.

The proliferation and misuse of commercial spyware pose growing security risks to the United States.

Since its founding in 2019, the Intellexa Consortium has acted as a marketing label for a variety of offensive cyber companies that offer commercial spyware and surveillance tools to enable targeted and mass surveillance campaigns.

These tools are packaged as a suite of tools under the brand-name “Predator” spyware, which can infiltrate a range of electronic devices through zero-click attacks that require no user interaction for the spyware to infect the device. Once a device is infected by the Predator spyware, the spyware can be leveraged for a variety of information stealing and surveillance capabilities—this includes the unauthorized extraction of data, geolocation tracking, and access to a variety of applications and personal information on the compromised device.

With a global customer base, the Intellexa Consortium has enabled the proliferation of commercial spyware and surveillance technologies around the world, including to authoritarian regimes, says the State Department.

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