Politician and former director of Open Russia Andrei Pivovarov said that the FSB hacked his phone using equipment from the Israeli company Cellebrite. Pivovarov spoke about this via his Telegram channel on June 25. Other details bring Citizen Lab, which found spy equipment on Pivovarov’s iPhone.
Citizen Lab experts found that Russian authorities used Cellebrite equipment to hack Pivovarov’s iPhone 12 around June 17, 2021, while the politician was in detention.
He was arrested a few weeks ago in a case of carrying out the activities of an “undesirable organization” – Open Russia, which Pivovarov dissolved in May 2021.
The analysis showed that the hacker used the Universal Forensic Extraction Device (UFED) product, which allows you to extract all data from the device.
Pivovarov said that “all information was actually pumped from his phone,” including correspondence with people involved in politics. According to him, based on the correspondence obtained from his phone, investigators “came to the justification that I continued ‘criminal activities’ as head of the Open Russia organization.”
As Citizen Lab noted, Russian authorities used Cellebrite to hack into Pivovarov’s phone, named after the company Announce March 18, 2021 on which he will leave Russia and Belarus.
Cellebrite is the world’s most popular provider of hacking equipment for Android and iOS phones. The Russian authorities used it, in particular, to try to hack the phone of Alexei Navalny’s ally Lyubov Sobol and the author of the public page “MSU Protest” Dmitry Ivanov. US authorities used Cellebrite to hack the phone of Thomas Matthew Crooks, who shot Donald Trump during a rally in Pennsylvania in 2024.
Andrei Pivovarov has been detained since May 2021. In 2024, he was transferred to Germany as part of a large-scale prisoner exchange between Russia and Western countries. After his release, Pivovarov was declared a “foreign agent.”