Prominent Angolan journalist targeted with Predator spyware

By AJ Vicens

Feb 17 (Reuters) - A ‌phone used by ​prominent ​Angolan journalist Teixeira Candido was infected with surveillance software from spyware vendor Intellexa for a brief period in May 2024, Amnesty International said ‌in a report published on Tuesday.

Candido was the head of the ⁠Syndicate of Angolan Journalists when his phone was targeted with a series of WhatsApp messages starting in ‌April 2024, according to the ‌report.

He appears to have clicked a link in one of the messages on May 4, which triggered the Predator infection, giving whoever targeted him full access ​to the contents of his phone, according to the report.

Intellexa's spyware has been linked to a string of privacy abuses in recent years, according to researchers ⁠and the U.S. government. Amnesty International, which said it was the first confirmed case of Predator’s use in ​Angola, did not attribute the targeting to a specific government customer.

A lawyer associated with Intellexa did not immediately respond to a request ​for comment on Tuesday.

"I feel exposed, as if ‌I were taking a shower with the bathroom door wide open," Candido told Reuters in an email Tuesday ahead of the ⁠report's publication.

He's not sure what content the attackers may have pulled from his phone, and said he was targeted through a person he does not know, but who told him ⁠that they were part of a group of students and had a project for which they ​wanted his opinion.

The U.S. government sanctioned seven people associated with the Intellexa Consortium in March 2024. A Treasury Department notice at the time described the business as “a complex international web of decentralized ‌companies that built and commercialized a comprehensive suite of highly invasive spyware products” that had been used to target government officials, ‌journalists, policy experts and opposition politicians.

The Trump administration removed three Intellexa executives from its ⁠sanctions list on December 30, 2025. ‌A U.S. official told Reuters ​at the time that the individuals had “demonstrated measures to separate themselves from the Intellexa Consortium.”

(Reporting by AJ Vicens in Detroit; Editing by ‌Sonali Paul)

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