FILE PHOTO: A visitor takes pictures as customers gather at a store selling Apple products during the launch of the new iPhone 7 sales at the State Department Store, GUM, in central Moscow, Russia September 23, 2016. REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin/File Photo
A team of former US government intelligence operatives working for the United Arab Emirates hacked into the iPhones of activists, diplomats and rival foreign leaders with the help of a sophisticated spying tool called Karma, in a campaign that shows how potent cyber-weapons are proliferating beyond the world’s superpowers and into the hands of smaller nations.
The cyber tool allowed the small Gulf country to monitor hundreds of targets beginning in 2016, from the Emir of Qatar and a senior Turkish official to a Nobel Peace laureate human-rights activist in Yemen, according to five former operatives and program documents. The sources interviewed were not Emirati citizens.
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