KARACHI: Pakistan on Thursday refuted claims published in an Amnesty International report on Thursday that a spyware product, manufactured by an Israeli company, was actively being used in the country.
According to a senior intelligence officer, who spoke to Dawn on condition of anonymity, the report was an “an attempt to malign Pakistan”.
“There is not an iota of truth in it,” he stressed.
The official was referring to a claim made in the Amnesty International investigation, titled “Intellexa Leaks”, which described the story of a human rights lawyer based in Pakistan.
The lawyer, according to the report, had approached Amnesty International in the summer of 2025 after receiving a suspicious link on WhatsApp from an unknown number.
Amnesty’s Security Lab investigated the link and identified it as a Predator spyware attack attempt based on the technical behaviour of the infection server.
Predator is highly invasive spyware manufactured by the Israeli company Intellexa.
According to Amnesty International, the investigation was based on a combina-tion of highly sensitive documents and other material leaked from the company, including internal company documents, sales and marketing materials, and training videos.
The months-long investigation was published in collaboration with Inside Story in Greece, Haaretz in Israel, and WAV Research Collective in Switzerland.
In 2023, Intellexa was fined by the Greek Data Protection Authority for failing to comply with its investigations into the company.
Google started sending spyware threat notifications to several hundred of its users across various countries, including Pakistan. The accounts were identified as Predator spyware targets.
Published in Dawn, December 5th, 2025