Al Jazeera im Fadenkreuz: Spionage, Werbung und ein gehackter Start

A parallel attack.

Unknown actors are said to have infected the broadcaster’s devices with Candiru, a state-sponsored spyware tool. According to reports, the route was online advertising: an ad, a seductively placed banner, malicious code behind it. That is how unobtrusively modern espionage can begin. And how conveniently.

On the internet, an attack need not come through an open door. It can arrive with the delivery of death’s messenger, tucked beneath a news report as an invisible greeting. The user sees news, figures and images. They do not see the hidden face of advertising. The device has already been compromised while the screen carries on as though nothing had happened.

For Al Jazeera, this is more than an irritation on a Tuesday evening. The broadcaster employs journalists whose iPhones had already been targeted in a spyware attack over the summer, according to Citizen Lab’s findings. The researchers found that an exploit for Apple’s iMessage had been used. It compromised the devices without the targets having to click anything.

That is the deviousness of the exploit: It requires no carelessness. No mistaken link, no persuasive phone call, no disguised app. The vulnerability lies in the very function that embodies trust. When people write to one another, they expect words, not weapons. That is exactly where the malicious code strikes.

No publicly available evidence establishes a connection between the attacks on the English-language website and the infection of devices. Nor are the perpetrators known. No one has proved that the same actors were behind both attacks, who ordered the use of Candiru or who controlled the online advertising. What is certain is that Al Jazeera has come under attack on several fronts. Those fronts do not appear to belong to a single, unified campaign. They look more like doors in a building whose floor plan no one knows.

Yet the picture fits all too well. A news organization, a targeted attack on the technology used by its journalists, a hacked English-language site. And a broadcaster whose political role is disputed in any case. The Israeli government has long accused Al Jazeera of disseminating propaganda. That is a government claim, not an established fact, and it proves nothing about the hackers. But it ensures that every technical incident immediately ends up in a political basement.

The new English-language website was supposed to expand the medium’s reach: to establish an international profile, reach a wider audience and carry its name beyond the borders of the Arab world. Barely 12 hours later, it had become a story in its own right. The launch looked like a door being opened. Then someone threw the bolt from the other side.

For Al Jazeera, the attack on its staff is also a stress test for Israel’s relationship with Qatar. For years, the two governments have been engaged in a dispute with many voices, in which the media are used to reinforce the respective parties’ own positions. Al Jazeera is not merely a broadcaster but an instrument of the respective side. The spyware attack turns this already heated public feud into a matter of national security.

That is the dirty arithmetic: The more political the language becomes, the easier it is to count a technical attack as an act of state. Yet those affected do not know who is listening. They know only that their phone has become a spy and that their daily work has acquired a shadow they cannot switch off.

As for the advertising? It goes on blinking. It promises products, accounts, clicks and experiences. It looks harmless and neatly packaged, like an instruction manual for everyday life. The internet has not forgotten the old trick of the poisoned letter. It has merely made it more efficient.

On the internet, an attack begins not with the gunshot but with the banner, politely blinking: Who, after all, controls the line between information and attack?