{"id":36732,"date":"2026-02-18T14:29:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T06:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/multimetro.hk\/plus\/2026\/02\/18\/prominent-angolan-journalist-targeted-with-predator-spyware\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T14:29:00","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T06:29:00","slug":"prominent-angolan-journalist-targeted-with-predator-spyware","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/multimetro.hk\/plus\/2026\/02\/18\/prominent-angolan-journalist-targeted-with-predator-spyware\/","title":{"rendered":"Prominent Angolan journalist targeted with Predator spyware"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A phone used by prominent Angolan journalist Teixeira Candido was \u200binfected with surveillance software from spyware vendor Intellexa for a brief period in May 2024, Amnesty International said \u200bin a report published on Tuesday.       Candido was the head of \u200bthe Syndicate of Angolan Journalists when \u2060his phone was targeted with a series of WhatsApp messages starting in April 2024, \u200baccording to the \u200creport.       He appears to have clicked a link in one of the messages on May 4, which triggered the Predator infection, \u200bgiving whoever targeted him full access to the contents of his phone, according to the report.       Intellexa&#8217;s spyware has been linked to a string of privacy abuses \u200cin recent \u200cyears, according to \u200bresearchers and the U.S. government. Amnesty International, which said it was the first confirmed case of Predator\u2019s use in Angola, did not attribute the targeting to a specific government customer.       A lawyer associated \u200bwith Intellexa did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tu<br \/>esday.       &#8220;I feel exposed, as if I were taking a shower with the bathroom door wide \u200bopen,&#8221; Candido told Reuters in an email Tuesday ahead of the report&#8217;s publication.       He&#8217;s not sure what content the attackers may have pulled from his phone, and said he was targeted through a person he does not know, but who \u200ctold him that they were part of a group of students and had a project for which they wanted his opinion.       The U.S. government sanctioned \u2060seven people associated with the \u200bIntellexa Consortium in March 2024. A Treasury Department notice at the time described the business as \u201ca complex international web of decentralized companies that built and commercialized a comprehensive \u2060suite of highly \u2060invasive spyware products\u201d that had been \u2060used to target government officials, journalists, policy experts and opposition politicians.       The Trump administration removed three Intellexa executives from its sanctions list on December 30, 2025. A U.S. official told \u2060Reuters at the time that t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A phone used by prominent Angolan journalist Teixeira Candido was \u200binfected with surveillance software from spyware vendor Intellexa for a brief period in May 2024, Amnesty International said \u200bin a report published on Tuesday. Candido was the head of \u200bthe Syndicate of Angolan Journalists when \u2060his phone was targeted with a series of WhatsApp messages [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Prominent Angolan journalist targeted with Predator spyware - Metro Plus<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/multimetro.hk\/plus\/2026\/02\/18\/prominent-angolan-journalist-targeted-with-predator-spyware\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Prominent Angolan journalist targeted with Predator spyware - Metro Plus\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A phone used by prominent Angolan journalist Teixeira Candido was \u200binfected with surveillance software from spyware vendor Intellexa for a brief period in May 2024, Amnesty International said \u200bin a report published on Tuesday. 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