Al Jazeera Media Network on Thursday said it âÂÂcondemns the targeting of devices belonging to several of its employees with spywareâ and pledged to continue to âÂÂprotect its employees and systemsâÂÂ.
The network said targeting journalists is an âÂÂassault on press freedom and the publicâÂÂs right to knowledgeâ and called for those responsible to be held accountable.
The Citizen Lab, a research unit at the University of Toronto, concluded in its report that Discover-Tech purchased the advertisements with built-in spyware. It then directed devices to CandiruâÂÂs malware through these advertisements.
Al Jazeera journalists were among the millions whose devices were targeted â including several who reported on sensitive subjects.
Al JazeeraâÂÂs in-house technology team first discovered unusual patterns on devices used by some journalists in 2024. The pattern continued into 2025. Al Jazeera reached out to Citizen Lab for a more detailed investigation into its suspicions that spyware was responsible for the activity.
âÂÂAnalysis of network logs provided to the Citizen Lab by Al Jazeera collected during the attack period provides a clear temporal signature of how the attack was executed,â the University of Toronto-based team said in its report published Thursday.
Al Jazeera said that the cooperation âÂÂcontributed to verifying these attacks and publicly documenting themâÂÂ.
CandiruâÂÂs spyware has previously been used to carry out surveillance on at least 100 journalists, dissidents and others in several countries.