Jordan targets dissidents with Cellebrite phone-cracking software

At least seven Jordanian human rights defenders and activists interrogated or apprehended due to their opposition to Israel's attacks against Gaza had their mobile devices' data extracted by Jordanian authorities using Cellebrite digital forensic software from late 2023 to mid 2025, reports The Record, a news site by cybersecurity firm Recorded Future.

Many other Jordanians could have had their phones compromised with the Cellebrite software, with prior testing of activists' devices indicating the country's use of the Israeli phone-cracking tool since 2020, according to a Citizen Lab analysis. Sophisticated exploit-based operations and brute-force intrusions have been launched by Cellebrite to pilfer files, chats, photos, videos, location history, saved credentials, phone logs, Wi-Fi history, email, web history, social media accounts, and third-party app data, as well as already deleted data.

While Cellebrite emphasized that it has been licensing its technology for "lawful purposes," such technology was previously reported by Amnesty International to have been tapped to covertly inject spyware into devices of a detained journalist and an activist.