Al Jazeera revealed an Israeli spying attempt targeting its employees' devices, shedding light on a path of cyberattacks and electronic espionage affecting institutions and individuals, coinciding with the escalation of fraud and hacking methods amid global technological development.
According to a report aired by the channel, 45 devices running the "Windows" system in Al Jazeera Media Network's network were subjected to spying using an Israeli program between 2024 and 2025, where the Israeli digital advertising agency "Discover-Tech" used a wide network of electronic ads to track specific targets and hack their devices.
Ron Deibert, founder of "Citizen Lab," clarified that about 24 news institutions worldwide received ads from the company, considering that targeting journalists allows uncovering their sources and knowing the stories they are working on, while the company acted as an intermediary for hired spyware companies.
For his part, Moroccan expert Mohsen Al-Khadisi believes that targeting the media is not an isolated event, pointing out that Israel possesses advanced expertise in cybersecurity and has an arsenal of specialized tracking programs, calling for complete abstention from opening links or files from unknown sources.
Deibert pointed out that the danger of the attack lies in the fact that the targeted person does not need to click on an ad or open a suspicious link, as merely displaying a hacking-ad can run malicious codes and exploit security vulnerabilities to install spyware.
Al-Khadisi added that the use of Israeli software in targeting is not new, as heads of state and senior officials had previously been hacked in recent years via the famous Israeli "Pegasus" program, with the aim of spying on them, threatening them, and learning about their stances.
In the same context, the same report recorded that Morocco came in third place among African countries exposed to the largest number of cyberattacks, accounting for about 10.6 percent of the total cyber events witnessed by the continent by the end of 2025.
The UAE government announced the thwarting of advanced and organized attacks targeting the aviation, energy, and education sectors last August, while the Jordanian National Cybersecurity Center announced repelling more than 15,000 fraud and hacking attacks across the digital space in the Kingdom during the period between 2022 and 2026.
Source: Anadolu Agency
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