An Israeli advertising agency has reportedly leveraged its extensive ad network to monitor users and share their data with a spyware company that has been blacklisted in the United States.
The digital advertising firm, Discover-Tech, allegedly provided access to various advertising platforms, including Google, Comcast, and Yandex from Russia, to surveillance groups in Israel, including Candiru, the blacklisted company. This information comes from reports published on Thursday by Confiant, an advertising security firm based in New York, and Citizen Lab, a cybersecurity watchdog from Canada. It appears that Discover-Tech’s ads were utilized to track individuals and even gain unauthorized access to their devices, according to the reports.
Candiru was added to the U.S. Department of Commerce’s blacklist back in 2021 for providing spyware to foreign governments that misused those tools to target officials, journalists, businesspeople, activists, academics, and embassy staff.
Reports indicate that Discover-Tech used a platform named Controlium, which allows its partner spyware companies to identify, fingerprint, and automatically infect devices just as an advertisement is loaded on the user’s screen—meaning that clicking the ad isn’t a prerequisite for being hacked.
Contact attempts to Discover-Tech went unanswered; their founder, Dekel Boni, also did not reply to a message sent via LinkedIn.
🚨 BREAKING: An Israeli ad firm called Discover-Tech used targeted ads to infect Al Jazeera devices with Candiru spyware. It also targeted NATO and European Parliament networks. Investigations show the ad firm facilitates multiple mercenary spyware partners. https://t.co/bdwG9EYDvL
— International Cyber Digest (@IntCyberDigest) October 15, 2026
Neither Confiant nor Citizen Lab has responded to inquiries for comments.
In a span of four months, Discover-Tech’s advertisements were displayed on approximately 200,000 unique websites and apps across various countries. Jerome Dangu, co-founder of Confiant, suggested that “very likely hundreds of millions of people would have been touched by Discover-Tech.”
The reports indicate that in the U.S., “hundreds of networks linked to sensitive sectors, including the Pentagon, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and the International Criminal Court,” were affected by malicious ads produced by Discover-Tech.
The Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has yet to respond to inquiries regarding the impact of this spyware on U.S. infrastructure.
Similar advertisements were also directed at individuals connected to the United Nations, NATO, the European Commission, and numerous national governments. Discover-Tech’s deployment of Candiru spyware led to the compromise of 45 Windows devices at Al-Jazeera between 2024 and 2025, according to Dangu.
Currently, Discover-Tech is facing exclusion from various parts of the online advertising sector, with Google, Comcast, and Europe’s IAB having removed it from their platforms.
