Russia used Cellebrite phone-hacking tool to crack down on dissident after firm cut off country

Citizen Lab documented that Russian authorities accessed dissident Andrey Pivovarov’s iPhone in June 2021 using Cellebrite’s UFED despite the vendor’s March 2021 claim to have exited Russia; forensic traces and court documents indicate data extracted from the device was used in his prosecution, highlighting how legacy offline forensic systems can continue to enable state surveillance and human-rights abuses.