Tuesday, January 14, 2025

How Barcelona became an unlikely hub for spyware startups

One more thing for Barcelona to be famous for?

"... Those are some of the reasons why in the last couple of years, Barcelona has become an unlikely hub for spyware companies, according to multiple people who work in the offensive cybersecurity industry ...

Having Barcelona become a crucial regional outpost for offensive cybersecurity companies puts the spyware problem squarely on the doorstep of Europe, which has a fractious relationship with surveillance tech, due to scandals in Cyprus, Greece, Hungary, and Poland — all involving Israeli spyware makers. ...

But why found a spyware startup in Barcelona, which just years earlier was at the center of a wide-reaching political scandal where Spanish government officials used spyware to target local politicians who pushed for independence? ...

Palm Beach Networks, and that it develops everything from the zero-day exploits used for compromising devices to the spyware implant itself ...

Barcelona is home to several other exploit and spyware makers that too are making the most of the city’s sunny, temperate weather, fresh seafood, and vibrant expat community.

Among them are Paradigm Shift, which was founded by former employees of Variston in the aftermath of the company’s collapse last year; and Epsilon, which is led by Jeremy Fetiveau, an industry veteran who used to work for a division within U.S. defense giant L3Harris that was created after the company acquired the Australian startup Azimuth.” ...

The city is said to be also home to an unnamed group of Israeli researchers who moved to Barcelona from Singapore to work on developing zero-day exploits. ..."

How Barcelona became an unlikely hub for spyware startups | TechCrunch


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