Origins of a Fraud
Jonathan Scott came to the attention of the media and the infosec community a few years back now after making dramatic claims of an exploit for iOS with RCE, which turned out to be fabricated bullshit. He repeated this by making another bold claim that the My2022 Olympics app that athletes used was spying on them via the microphone, which also turned out to be baseless claims, but not before the media latched onto the story and spread the disinformation.
Fraud to FARA
Jonathan’s shenanigans have recently taken a darker turn, what started as a nuisance with his continuous spyware drivel and conspiracy theories, are now being pushed by more powerful entities who have a political agenda. His recent “research” took aim at the research done by Citizen Lab and Amnesty International in their unveiling of journalists, dissidents and activists being targeted by spyware called Pegasus developed by the NSO Group that has been blacklisted by the U.S. Government amongst others. He has taken the position that the NSO Group is innocent and is not only defending them, but also the authoritarian regimes that have purchased and used the tool against journalists, activists and dissidents.
Goodnight Irina
It was around this time in late June and early July of 2022 that Irina Tsukerman took an interest in Jonathan’s work. Citizen Lab’s report has caused issues for some of her clients as well and aligned with her agenda. Irina has taken an odd stance defending multiple authoritarian regimes, most notably Saudi Arabia and Mohammed bin Salman where evidence of Pegasus being used against murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s family and surrounding circle. Irina’s “news” stories are biased towards defending these regimes and so it is not a coincidence that she found Jonathan to interview. Numerous people warned her that he is not trustworthy and has repeatedly made false claims, however she did not care if what he said was true or not, only that it aligned with a narrative that she herself is pushing, her motives are suspect.
It was then that we learned that Irina is a prolific spreader of disinformation, not only the articles and interviews themselves but is also associated with various nation-state bot farms that were promoting her and other specific content that aligned with specific political narratives.
After several reports regarding Irina Tsukerman’s repeated violations of Twitter’s ToS her account was not only suspended, but she was banned from the platform altogether due to the seriousness of the offenses. She repeatedly blamed me (@jonathandata0) for shutting her account down and made several false claims regarding the loss of her account attempting to paint it as a larger conspiracy.
One of Irina’s friends Adrian Calamel was quite upset when Irina lost her Twitter account and took it on himself to harass people he thought were responsible. He then tweeted directly to Jonathan…
In addition to Irina Tsukerman, and Adrian, a Jose J Olivas entered the picture who also has an axe to grind with Citizen Lab as he is aligned with far right elements in the Spanish government who have been accused of using NSO Group’s Pegasus software to target Catalonians in what has been referred to as Catalangate.
Jonathan, Tsukerman and Olivas colluded on a hit piece in the Spanish far-right magazine ElTriangle making more false allegations and conspiracy theories. Around this time I also noticed that none other than Shalev Hulio co-CEO of NSO Group and co-founder had shared a tweet by Jose J Olivas promoting Jonathan’s disinformation report. In addition the disinformation report was pushed by NSO Group’s PR teams to journalists.
Further we noticed that another co-founder Omri Lavie was sniffing around LinkedIn accounts that were critical of Irina Tsukerman after she took her disinformation campaigns to LinkedIn.
Then another hit piece was published, this time in Israel Hayom which was written by Ariel Kahana and not fact checked. The article is full of lies regarding Irina losing her Twitter account, Jonathan being kicked out of school and other stories all blaming Citizen Lab and Amnesty International for fabricating evidence. The report even claims that Jonathan is “He was rated by well-known cyber companies and also by the US Pentagon, as a world-class top hacker” which is another huge lie made up by Jonathan himself.
The NSO Group was actively involved in promoting Jonathan’s report as well as the work of Jose J Olivas and Irina Tsukerman as it aligned with common goals, an attempt to discredit Citizen Lab and Amnesty International’s research into Pegasus and the NSO Group, not to mention the ongoing inquiry by the EU of Pegasus and the use of commercial spyware.
Hotel California or Hotel Rwanda?
It was no surprise that Jonathan along with his supporting cast of disinformation friends published a report on the Rwandan government’s use of Pegasus to target journalists and dissidents. It came to light that Jonathan tricked a victim of Pegasus into provide him with her private information under the guise of being a research student, he then published his communications with her without her consent. The victim was Carine Kanimba whose father is Paul Rusesabagina, who was portrayed as the hero in the movie “Hotel Rwanda” portrayed by Don Cheadle. Rusesabagina was a permanent resident in the United States, when he was tricked, kidnapped and imprisoned in Rwanda on terrorism charges related to support for the FLN.
Carine Kanimba presented to the EU PEGA Committee around the same time Jonathan released his report and Rwandan intelligence accounts associated with the Rwandan government promoted his report in an attempt to discredit the findings of Citizen Lab and Amnesty.
These Rwandan intelligence accounts are supporting and promoting Jonathan and it appears similar accounts from Saudi Arabia are also supporting the disinformation campaign.
