Cellebrite
Israeli digital forensics company
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February 2025 | Cellebrite announced it would halt the use of its digital forensics products by certain customers in Serbia following the Amnesty International report about potential misuse of their technology. |
2024 | Seven UK government agencies, including three police agencies, London's city authority, and the UK Foreign Office, signed contracts with Cellebrite, spending a total of $370,000 on Cellebrite services. |
December 2024 | Amnesty International reported that Serbian police used Cellebrite UFED tools to bypass security on an Android device belonging to journalist Slaviša Milanov and devices of environmental activists, potentially installing NoviSpy spyware. |
July 2024 | The FBI used unreleased Cellebrite technology to access the phone of Thomas Matthew Crooks, who attempted to assassinate former President Donald Trump, successfully unlocking the device within 40 minutes using new software from Cellebrite's federal team. |
July 2024 | Cellebrite announced the acquisition of Cyber Technology Services, a US-based cybersecurity company with federal project clearance. |
2021 | The New York Times reported that Myanmar's state budget included MacQuisition, a forensic software product from Cellebrite's subsidiary BlackBag Technologies used for extracting data from Apple computers. |
2021 | The Intercept reported that despite the previous announcement, Cellebrite was still selling software to China. |
2021 | Cellebrite announced they would cease selling products to the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) in Bangladesh after a reported connection between their software and the organization's extrajudicial killings. |
2021 | Moxie Marlinspike publicly exposed multiple software vulnerabilities in Cellebrite's UFED and Physical Analyzer, revealing potential arbitrary code execution risks and security flaws, which prompted Cellebrite to patch some vulnerabilities and remove full support for analyzing iPhones. |
2021 | Cellebrite was valued at approximately $2.4 billion, marking a significant milestone in the company's financial valuation. |
August 2021 | Cellebrite completed its merger and was listed on Nasdaq under ticker symbols CLBT and CLBTW. |
July 2021 | Civil society organizations signed a letter arguing against Cellebrite's public listing due to human rights concerns. |
May 2021 | Botswana police used a Cellebrite UFED device to extract data from journalist Oratile Dikologang's phone, following a senior officer's order to search for information about 'offensive' Facebook posts, as reported by the Committee to Protect Journalists. |
April 2021 | Cellebrite announced plans to go public through a merger with TWC Tech Holdings II Corporation. |
March 2021 | Cellebrite's forensic technology aided the Civil Police of Rio de Janeiro State in extracting deleted WhatsApp messages in the investigation of Henry Borel's death. The extracted messages were described as 'essential technical evidence' in the case against the boy's stepfather Jairinho and mother Monique Medeiros. |
March 2021 | Cellebrite announced the termination of its cooperation with Russia and Belarus following the lawsuit and revelations about its technology being used against political opposition. |
March 2021 | An activist in Jerusalem filed a lawsuit in the Israeli Supreme Court against Cellebrite after discovering the company's UFED technology was used in the Lyubov Sobol affair to persecute political opponents in Belarus and Russia. |
2020 | Cellebrite announced it would cease selling solutions and services to customers in Hong Kong and China due to changes in U.S. regulations. |
2020 | Cellebrite announced technology to crack encrypted messages in the Signal app, a claim they later retracted and downplayed. |
2020 | Ron Serber left Cellebrite, leaving Yossi Carmil as the sole CEO. |
September 16 2020 | Haaretz reported on Cellebrite's provision of mobile phone hacking services to Saudi Arabia, revealing details of the covert hacking operation conducted in November 2019. |
August 2020 | MIT Technology Review revealed that Cellebrite sold digital forensic services to the Hong Kong Police Force, enabling phone unlocking during the 2019-20 Hong Kong protests. |
January 2020 | Cellebrite acquired BlackBag Technologies, Inc., a US-based computer forensics company, expanding its digital intelligence solutions. |
2019 | Cellebrite marketed their digital forensics products to European Union authorities as a tool for managing refugee documentation, highlighting that 77% of refugees arrived without documentation, while 43% possessed smartphones. |
2019 | Cellebrite announced UFED Premium, claiming the ability to unlock iOS devices running iOS 12.3 and Android phones like the Galaxy S9. |
2019 | Israeli Growth Partners (IGP) invested $110 million in Cellebrite. |
November 2019 | A Cellebrite representative traveled to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to conduct a phone hacking operation for the Saudi Justice Ministry, requesting special passage through airport controls and an isolated hotel room to execute the hacking process. |
June 24 2019 | Cellebrite signed a $30-35 million contract with ICE for universal forensic extraction devices, accessories, licenses, training, and support services. |
2018 | Two Reuters journalists were tried and convicted after using evidence from the 2017 Rohingya massacre. Cellebrite claimed to have stopped selling products to Myanmar in this year. |
October 2018 | Cellebrite's technology assisted Thai Police in a wildlife trafficking investigation, with Freeland Foundation forensics experts using Cellebrite devices to uncover evidence of poaching coordinators planning hunting operations in Thailand, Malaysia, and potentially Myanmar. |
2017 | Cellebrite entered into a $2.2 million contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). |
2017 | Rohingya massacre occurred in Myanmar, which became a significant case involving investigative journalism. |
2017 | Cellebrite's Mobile Lifecycle division was rebranded as Mobilogy, focusing on mobile data transfer and analysis tools. |
March 2016 | Cellebrite offered to unlock an iPhone involved in the FBI–Apple encryption dispute, though the FBI later claimed another third party assisted in accessing the device. |
November 2015 | Cellebrite assisted Leicestershire Police in unlocking a damaged smartphone belonging to murdered teenager Kayleigh Haywood, which helped identify her killer Stephen Beardman and groomer Luke Harlow. |
April 2011 | The Michigan chapter of the ACLU questioned Michigan State Police's use of Cellebrite UFEDs for cell phone searches, challenging the legality of their device usage. |
This contents of the box above is based on material from the Wikipedia article Cellebrite, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.