To Catch a Predator, Turn on Developer Mode

Mercenary mobile spyware has become more accessible, brazen, and sophisticated: reports from Amnesty International and Citizen Lab highlight campaigns (including Predator) that target journalists, politicians, and civil society, while researchers discovered Android devices with preinstalled backdoored firmware in U.S. schools. These tools use validation and anti-detection techniques, complicating capture and analysis; the authors advocate using Developer Mode and scalable mobile forensics to detect and mitigate such threats.