Report says Israeli ad vendor DiscoverTech helped deliver spyware to Al Jazeera devices

Citizen Lab and ad-security firm Confiant published a joint investigation that, they say, connects Tel Aviv-based ad vendor DiscoverTech to a covert advertising programme used to deliver spyware to Al Jazeera devices.

The report alleges DiscoverTech operated channels inside standard online advertising slots on thousands of websites and apps that allowed spyware developers to mount zero-click intrusions without requiring victims to interact with a malicious link or file. According to the investigation, at least 45 devices associated with Al Jazeera were targeted between 2024 and 2025.

Al Jazeera had earlier reported that 36 of its staff members were targeted with Pegasus, the spyware developed by NSO Group. The report frames the operation as an ad-security failure that was exploited by attackers to reach high-profile journalistic targets.

Citizen Lab and Confiant describe the delivery mechanism as using routine advertising inventory to reach devices covertly; their write-up says this method converted benign-seeming ad slots into a vector for infections. Al Jazeera declined to comment on the investigators' release, the report says.

The investigation cites zero-click techniques — intrusions that do not require the victim to take an action — as central to the attacks it documents. Confiant is an ad-security firm and Citizen Lab is a digital surveillance watchdog; together they attribute the ad-delivery role to DiscoverTech.

The joint report gives the firm a central operational role in enabling spyware developers to reach targets through the advertising ecosystem.

Access Now’s Natalia Krapiva is quoted in the coverage warning that routine browsing or opening apps can let malicious actors access all data on devices without the user’s knowledge; she calls for urgent technical, legal and regulatory measures to address infrastructure used in such attacks.

The available article does not record a public response from DiscoverTech, nor does it describe any official investigation or legal action prompted by the report.

Headlines from other outlets indicate the same central claim — that an Israeli ad firm helped infect Al Jazeera devices — but the detailed account and numbers in this brief come from the Citizen Lab–Confiant report as presented in the published article.

The piece links the operational mechanism, the number of targeted devices it identifies, and the earlier Al Jazeera count of staff targeted with Pegasus, but it does not provide independent forensic data in the article text beyond what the investigation asserts.

The reporting raises questions about how advertising infrastructure can be repurposed for espionage against journalists and media organisations, and it records calls from digital-rights advocates for regulatory and technical action.

The published account focuses on the investigators’ findings and the figures they report rather than on responses from the firm named in the report.