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Cellebrite said it cut off Russia, but Russia used is tools anyway
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Russian authorities hacked into the phone of a prominent political opponent while he was in custody, using technology made by forensics firm Cellebrite — even after the company had said it cut ties with Putin’s government agencies, according to a new report that raises fresh questions about whether Western tech companies can truly control how their tools are used once they’re in the wild. The case is a cautionary tale for any technology company that sells to governments. Cellebrite, an Israeli outfit with a second headquarters in Virginia that sells to governments all over the world — including in the U.S — had announced it would stop providing hardware and software to Russia. It apparently didn’t, or couldn’t, follow through. Researchers at The Citizen Lab, digital rights group based at the University of Toronto, said they found evidence that a Russian government investigative unit used a phone hacking tool made by Cellebrite to break into the iPhone of local human rights dissident and opposition politician Andrey Pivovarov in June 2021. Three months before that hack, Cellebrite had announced that it would “immediately” stop selling its technology to its Russian government customers. On its official website, Cellebrite claims that as of March 2021, when it cut ties with Putin’s government, the company “can stop the device from functioning or receiving software updates.” It’s unclear why that didn’t happen in this case, and the episode exposes an uncomfortable truth about surveillance tech, which is that once powerful hacking and surveillance technologies reach the wrong customer, clawing them back isn’t so easy. The tools proliferate, get abused, and can keep getting abused, often long after the company that made them has washed its hands of the customer. “It’s not surprising, and [it] is the result of the policies of Cellebrite,” said Eitay Mack, an Israeli human rights lawyer who has long campaigned against surveillance technology makers like Cellebrite and spyware maker NSO Group. Contact Us Do you have more information about Cellebrite? Or about how Cellebrite’s customers are abusing its tech? We’d love to hear from you. From a non-work device and network, you can contact Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai securely on Signal at +1 917 257 1382, or via Telegram and Keybase @lorenzofb, or email. Mack argued that ceasing sales, and even revoking a software license, doesn’t stop a former Cellebrite customer from abusing the company’s technology, as this case demonstrates. Mack also pointed out that Cellebrite refuses to say whether it asks customers to dismantle the hacking tools it sold to them, a critical gap that its own cut-ties announcements don’t address. This case, Mack added, suggests that former customers can still abuse Cellebrite’s phone unlocking tool, dubbed UFED, even after the company stops supporting the customer and presumably revokes its software license. In theory, that should make the company’s devices less useful. John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at the Citizen Lab, told TechCrunch that Cellebrite “should also remote-disable deployments following credible reports of abuse, and end the era of plausible deniability by implementing cryptographically-signed watermarks on all imaged devices.” In plain terms, Cellebrite should be able to remotely brick its own tools when they’re being misused, and it should build in a kind of digital fingerprint so that any data extracted with its technology can be traced back to which specific device was used. Cellebrite sells hardware devices designed to unlock and hack into cellphones that are connected to them. Over the years, researchers have documented cases where company customers used its technology against dissidents, human rights activists, and journalists in Hong Kong, Kenya, and Jordan. In response to some of these findings, Cellebrite has cut ties with Bangladesh, China and Hong Kong, Myanmar, and Serbia. In an email to the Citizen Lab, which he share
Indian customer engagement software firm MoEngage has acquired San Francisco-based startup Aampe in an all-cash deal, betting that AI agents that make decisions for individual customers will become the future of marketing. MoEngage did not disclose the financial terms of the transaction, but a source familiar with the matter told TechCrunch that the all-cash deal was worth tens of millions of dollars. Founded in 2020, Aampe develops software that assigns a dedicated AI agent to each customer, allowing brands to personalize messaging based on individual behavior rather than traditional audience segments and campaign rules. The startup has more than 30 customers across the U.S., Europe, and Asia-Pacific, and grew annual recurring revenue by 150% over the past year, MoEngage co-founder and Chief Executive Raviteja Dodda said in an interview. Dodda told TechCrunch that the acquisition will help it win customers using rival marketing platforms such as Salesforce and Adobe. “A large part of our growth is driven by migrations of enterprise customers from Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Adobe Experience Cloud,” Dodda said. MoEngage recently signed three to four multi-million-dollar annual contract value deals with customers that switched from Salesforce, Dodda said. He’s hopeful that the Aampe acquisition will help him win more of such customers. The acquisition comes as software companies race to embed AI deeper into enterprise applications, moving beyond tools that generate content or assist employees towards agents making autonomous decisions. In marketing, that includes deciding which customers to target, what messages to send, and when to send them. Aampe’s technology is used by brands including Swiggy, Grab, and Taxfix, some of which also use MoEngage’s customer engagement platform. The acquisition comes over six months after MoEngage raised $280 million through a mix of primary and secondary transactions. Around 20 Aampe employees will join MoEngage, taking the company’s workforce to roughly 820 people. Founded in 2020, Aampe has raised about $28 million across three funding rounds. The startup counts Peak XV Partners, Z47, and Theory Ventures among its investors. When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence. Jagmeet covers startups, tech policy-related updates, and all other major tech-centric developments from India for TechCrunch. He previously worked as a principal correspondent at NDTV. You can contact or verify outreach from Jagmeet by emailing mail@journalistjagmeet.com. View Bio
In Brief Posted: 9:28 AM PDT · May 22, 2026 Image Credits:Win McNamee / Getty Images The merchandise website of FBI director Kash Patel was taken offline on Friday after reports that it had been hijacked by hackers trying to infect visitors with malware, as first reported by Straight Arrow News. As of this writing, the website of Based Apparel is offline. On Thursday, an X user who goes by Debbie posted that the brand’s website apparently had malware on it, in particular an infostealer, a type of malicious software designed to infect victims and steal their credentials and passwords. A security researcher later analyzed the malware. Brand Apparel could not be reached for comment. TechCrunch emailed a Gmail address previously associated with Patel, but we have not received an answer. This was not a good week for security for MAGA-associated business ventures. On Friday, President Trump’s cellphone provider and maker of Trump Mobile confirmed that the company left customers’ personal information exposed online, including names, email addresses, mailing addresses, cell numbers, and order identifiers. The confirmation came days after a researcher alerted two YouTubers who had purchased Trump Mobile’s phone, that their personal data was exposed on the internet. Topics Subscribe for the industry’s biggest tech news Latest in Security
President Trump’s namesake cellphone provider and smartphone maker Trump Mobile is leaking customer data, including mailing addresses and email addresses, according to reports. On Tuesday, YouTubers Coffeezilla and penguinz0, who both said they ordered Trump Mobile’s gold-colored T1 phone, said they had been alerted by a researcher who found the exposed data online. “I know that because sadly I am one of those customers whose mailing address, email address, you know, everything short of credit card number is being leaked,” said Coffeezilla, who has risen to fame investigating crypto scams. “Do not order on trumpmobile.com unless you’re ready for your information to be leaked. It’s basically that bad.” The two Youtubers said they ordered the T1 smartphone out of curiosity, not because they support the President and his business endeavors. Now, like other Trump Mobile customers, their information has been leaked. They both said they were alerted of the leak by a source, who shared their personal information to prove they really had access to it. The researcher told them they were not able to get a hold of anyone at Trump Mobile, so the issue isn’t fixed yet. “All of us have been met with radio silence,” penguinz0 said. Both YouTubers did not explain how hackers could access the data because they said it was very easy to do that, and the data is still available online. Trump Mobile did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment. Contact Us Do you have more information about the leak of Trump Mobile’s customers’ data? From a non-work device, you can contact Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai securely on Signal at +1 917 257 1382, or via Telegram and Keybase @lorenzofb, or email. According to the unique IDs in the leak, Coffeezilla said, it appears that only 30,000 people ordered the phone. That is a much lower number than expected. Last year, according to an estimate, there had been 590,000 pre-orders, with a cost of $100. Trump Mobile was announced last year, with the promise of delivering an all Made in USA phone. As it turns out, according to NBC News, whose reporters got their hands on the device some nine months after it was supposed to be delivered, marketing materials now say the phone was “designed with American values in mind” and “shaped by American innovation.” The Verge and others found that the phone sports an American flag with only 11 stripes instead of the dozen it should have, although it’s possible that the graphic designer intended the “TRUMP MOBILE” logo to be the twelfth stripe. Some have also noted that the phone looks similar to a two-year-old HTC phone, suggesting it may just be a rebranded device. The phone has been mired with issues since day one. 404 Media, for example, tried to order the T1 when it was announced and the order page failed and charged the wrong amount. When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence. Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai is a Senior Writer at TechCrunch, where he covers hacking, cybersecurity, surveillance, and privacy. You can contact or verify outreach from Lorenzo by emailing lorenzo@techcrunch.com, via encrypted message at +1 917 257 1382 on Signal, and @lorenzofb on Keybase/Telegram. View Bio
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