Greek intelligence agency allegedly hacked Meta security manager

While residing in Greece, Artemis Seaford, who used to work as a security manager at Meta, had her phone compromised by Predator spyware.

According to a report by The New York Times, Artemis Seaford, a former security policy manager at Meta, had her phone wiretapped and hacked by Greece's national intelligence agency while she was working for Meta and partly living in Greece. Predator, a spyware developed by a company in North Macedonia called Cytrox, was reportedly used to surveil Seaford. Predator infects a victim's phone when they click a link, unlike Pegasus spyware, which can infect a device just by calling it. Predator has been known to target government dissidents and journalists in the past.

Seaford was alerted to the possibility of being hacked when she saw her name on a leaked list of spyware targets in November 2022. Researchers later confirmed that her phone had been infected with Predator in September 2021. Seaford was also wiretapped for a year, according to the Times.

Seaford had been working for Meta from 2020 to 2022, where she focused on cybersecurity policy issues and spoke with political officials from Greece and other European countries. It is unclear why Seaford was targeted by Greece intelligence, and she has since filed a lawsuit against the unknown individuals responsible for the attack. She has also asked the Greek Authority for the Protection of the Privacy of Telecommunications to investigate whether her phone was wiretapped.