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Chasing Shadows: Cyber Espionage, Subversion, and the Global Fight for Democracy
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Like a John Le Carré novel updated for the digital age, Chasing Shadows provides a gripping account of how the Citizen Lab, the world’s foremost digital watchdog, has uncovered dozens of cyber espionage cases and protects people in countries around the world. Called “essential reading” by Margaret Atwood, it’s a chilling reminder of the invisible invasions happening on smartphones and computers around the world.
In this real-life spy thriller, cyber security expert Ronald Deibert details the unseemly marketplace for high-tech surveillance, professional disinformation, and computerized malfeasance. He reveals how his team of digital sleuths at the Citizen Lab have lifted the lid on dozens of covert operations targeting innocent citizens everywhere.
Chasing Shadows provides a front-row seat to a dark underworld of digital espionage, disinformation, and subversion. There, autocrats and dictators peer into their targets’ lives with the mere press of a button, spreading their tentacles of authoritarianism through a digital ecosystem that is insecure, poorly regulated, and prone to abuse. The activists, opposition figures, and journalists who dare to advocate for basic political rights and freedoms are hounded, arrested, tortured, and sometimes murdered.
From the gritty streets of Guatemala City to the corridors of power in the White House, this compelling narrative traces the journey of the Citizen Lab as it evolved into a globally renowned source of counterintelligence for civil society. As this small team of investigators disarmed cyber mercenaries and helped to improve the digital security of billions of people worldwide, their success brought them, too, into the same sinister crosshairs that plagued the victims they worked to protect.
Deibert recounts how the Lab exposed the world’s pre-eminent cyber-mercenary firm, Israel-based NSO Group—the creators of the phone-hacking marvel Pegasus—in a series of human rights abuses, from domestic spying scandals in Spain, Poland, Hungary, and Greece to its implication in the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.
Like a John Le Carré novel updated for the digital age, Chasing Shadows provides a gripping account of how the Citizen Lab, the world’s foremost digital watchdog, has uncovered dozens of cyber espionage cases and protects people in countries around the world. Called “essential reading” by Margaret Atwood, it’s a chilling reminder of the invisible invasions happening on smartphones and computers around the world.
In this real-life spy thriller, cyber security expert Ronald Deibert details the unseemly marketplace for high-tech surveillance, professional disinformation, and computerized malfeasance. He reveals how his team of digital sleuths at the Citizen Lab have lifted the lid on dozens of covert operations targeting innocent citizens everywhere.
Chasing Shadows provides a front-row seat to a dark underworld of digital espionage, disinformation, and subversion. There, autocrats and dictators peer into their targets’ lives with the mere press of a button, spreading their tentacles of authoritarianism through a digital ecosystem that is insecure, poorly regulated, and prone to abuse. The activists, opposition figures, and journalists who dare to advocate for basic political rights and freedoms are hounded, arrested, tortured, and sometimes murdered.
From the gritty streets of Guatemala City to the corridors of power in the White House, this compelling narrative traces the journey of the Citizen Lab as it evolved into a globally renowned source of counterintelligence for civil society. As this small team of investigators disarmed cyber mercenaries and helped to improve the digital security of billions of people worldwide, their success brought them, too, into the same sinister crosshairs that plagued the victims they worked to protect.
Deibert recounts how the Lab exposed the world’s pre-eminent cyber-mercenary firm, Israel-based NSO Group—the creators of the phone-hacking marvel Pegasus—in a series of human rights abuses, from domestic spying scandals in Spain, Poland, Hungary, and Greece to its implication in the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.
441 pages, Kindle Edition
Published February 4, 2025
70 people are currently reading
499 people want to read
About the author
Ronald J. Deibert
13 books45 followersRonald J. Deibert is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Citizen Lab and Canada Centre for Global Security Studies, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto.
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
July 4, 2025
read this for my research project. sooooooo interesting. an entire world i had no real idea existed — growing more real every day. explains a lot about geopolitical conflicts. one of the best things about this book is how much nuance it reveals is necessary when looking at the decisions made by governments and companies alike, sometimes even individuals — they seem to make no sense, but when you really study their situation, it becomes clear
logistically, this book is a nightmare. there is so much repetition and the time frame makes no sense at all and you get the sense that the author is patting himself on the back every other sentence. but content wise….. fascinating.
logistically, this book is a nightmare. there is so much repetition and the time frame makes no sense at all and you get the sense that the author is patting himself on the back every other sentence. but content wise….. fascinating.
March 13, 2025
A very eye opening read about the world of cyber espionage and how vulnerable we all are because of technology we use everyday. Very scary indeed. The book is a bit of a dry read …at least it was for me. Hence why I only gave it 3 stars. But the topic is fascinating.
June 15, 2025
The "readability" of this book is more a "3"... but the importance is a "five"... so I guess that evens out to a four star rating.
Chasing Shadows is almost an autobiography of "Citizen Lab", which the author helped to found, which is based at U of T in Toronto.
The "Citizen Lab" is a non-profit organization which tries to fight the use of spyware to illegally hack or tap the phones of people around the world. On page 152 Deibert writes:
I wanted to pursue and expose clandestine operations that undermine human rights and public accountability, no matter where they are found or however powerful those behind them may be.
Although other private companies do the same thing (and most also have roots in Israel), a company called NSO group sells their "Pegasus" spyware to (almost) any horrendous government (or company) in the world, that wants to spy on dissenters, journalists, lawyers, rebel rousers, or even Saudi princesses attempting to run away from their fathers . I say "almost" because on page 322 the author notes that Israel would NOT allow the sale of Pegasus to the Russians, but up until that point in the book, seeing that NSO seemed to be selling their product to every dictatorship in the world, I was thinking "is there ANYONE these people won't sell their spyware to?"
Citizen Lab is now one of a few groups, including one out of Amnesty International, which people will turn to when they feel like they've been hacked, and Citizen Lab will analyze their phone and be able to say things like "yes you were hacked on Oct. 5 2017 by this type of spyware attack, and ever since then the Saudi government has seen every single text message you've sent and that's why all your friends back in Saudi Arabia have been arrested."
And the "hacking" is getting insane. As described on page 306, John Scott-Railton from Citizen Lab, stated in 2022 to a U.S. House Intelligence Committee hearing that this isn't about sitting in a cafe and connecting to an unsecured wifi. Your phone can be on your bedside table at two in the morning. One minute your phone is clean; the next minute the data is silently streaming to an adversary a continent away. You see nothing.
So... picture a world where any individual, company, or government, who wishes to spy on someone, can purchase spyware basically off the shelf from a company like NSO. And then... accept that this spyware is being turned on lawyers, investigative journalists, the Dalai Llama (not joking!), i.e. people fighting for democracy and "the truth"... and then this spyware allows these repressive governments to arrest and imprison these people, or, in the case of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi journalist, strangle him to death in Turkey and then dismember him, and then also hack his fiancee's phone to see what she gets up to.
I mean... good God. :(
I have to admit, I find the work that the Citizen Lab does, in trying to protect us all from this level of cyber warfare, to be heroic. These are simply horrendous attacks on civil liberty and on democracy itself, so I would encourage anyone to learn more about Citizen Lab and it's allies in this war.
As far as this book goes - I hate to say it, and I can't quite put my finger on why this is true - but it is close to unreadable. It's just too much stuff and even though in hindsight, you can see why the chapters are organized the way they are, as you read the book, it just seems like the same old mess being regurgitated over and over and over again endlessly.
It's almost as though this should be a tight one-hour film documentary - not a full book?
Having said that, I'll finish with some notes I made here and there:
- the Saudi government spied on and hacked female activist Loujain al-Hathloul, furious at her for various things, but one being her attempts to prove that Saudi females should be allowed to drive cars. After capturing her, partly with the Pegasus software, she was eventually imprisoned:
She was repeatedly tortured and subjected to intense interrogation, including the use of electric shocks, waterboarding, flogging, and threats of rape and death (page 233).
- in El Salvador, strongman Nayib Bukele uses Pegasus against anyone who shows resistance to his tyrannical rule. As far as media in general, in El Salvador , his strategy (as documented in a 2022 US State Department Assessment) is to flood El Salvador with propaganda, demonize the institutions charged with debunking that propaganda - the free press and civil society - dominant public narratives, and repress dissent (page 246).
- Spain has had a long-term espionage campaign against Catalan.
In all our years studying cyber espionage, what we found in Spain was among the most audacious spying operations in scope and scale - an attempt to subject a large cross-section of Catalan civil society to targeted surveillance. [ ] Every Catalan president since 2010 had been hacked while in office, before election, or after retiring (pages 264/65).
- this is a good one! in Mexico, three obesity-prevention officials, who were supportive of a national tax on soda (pop) were hacked due to their work to reduce the consumption of sugary drinks in Mexico! And as far as Deibert could tell, the "hacks" of these three officials happened right after the President of Coca Cola called the Mexican president to complain about the soda tax (Page 187).
- the UK in general, and Tony Blair in particular, come off really badly as "butlers to the world" and sell outs to Saudi princes: the establishment has profited by serving the interests of dictators, kleptocrats, and oligarchs who take advantage of the country's favorable tax laws, exorbitant real estate market, and entourage of costly lawyers and PR consultants to launder their assets and enhance their public image (page 205)
Okay - I gotta stop somewhere... I guess I'll stop here... but the list is endless.
I didn't even mention the Saudi princess!
Chasing Shadows is almost an autobiography of "Citizen Lab", which the author helped to found, which is based at U of T in Toronto.
The "Citizen Lab" is a non-profit organization which tries to fight the use of spyware to illegally hack or tap the phones of people around the world. On page 152 Deibert writes:
I wanted to pursue and expose clandestine operations that undermine human rights and public accountability, no matter where they are found or however powerful those behind them may be.
Although other private companies do the same thing (and most also have roots in Israel), a company called NSO group sells their "Pegasus" spyware to (almost) any horrendous government (or company) in the world, that wants to spy on dissenters, journalists, lawyers, rebel rousers, or even Saudi princesses attempting to run away from their fathers . I say "almost" because on page 322 the author notes that Israel would NOT allow the sale of Pegasus to the Russians, but up until that point in the book, seeing that NSO seemed to be selling their product to every dictatorship in the world, I was thinking "is there ANYONE these people won't sell their spyware to?"
Citizen Lab is now one of a few groups, including one out of Amnesty International, which people will turn to when they feel like they've been hacked, and Citizen Lab will analyze their phone and be able to say things like "yes you were hacked on Oct. 5 2017 by this type of spyware attack, and ever since then the Saudi government has seen every single text message you've sent and that's why all your friends back in Saudi Arabia have been arrested."
And the "hacking" is getting insane. As described on page 306, John Scott-Railton from Citizen Lab, stated in 2022 to a U.S. House Intelligence Committee hearing that this isn't about sitting in a cafe and connecting to an unsecured wifi. Your phone can be on your bedside table at two in the morning. One minute your phone is clean; the next minute the data is silently streaming to an adversary a continent away. You see nothing.
So... picture a world where any individual, company, or government, who wishes to spy on someone, can purchase spyware basically off the shelf from a company like NSO. And then... accept that this spyware is being turned on lawyers, investigative journalists, the Dalai Llama (not joking!), i.e. people fighting for democracy and "the truth"... and then this spyware allows these repressive governments to arrest and imprison these people, or, in the case of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi journalist, strangle him to death in Turkey and then dismember him, and then also hack his fiancee's phone to see what she gets up to.
I mean... good God. :(
I have to admit, I find the work that the Citizen Lab does, in trying to protect us all from this level of cyber warfare, to be heroic. These are simply horrendous attacks on civil liberty and on democracy itself, so I would encourage anyone to learn more about Citizen Lab and it's allies in this war.
As far as this book goes - I hate to say it, and I can't quite put my finger on why this is true - but it is close to unreadable. It's just too much stuff and even though in hindsight, you can see why the chapters are organized the way they are, as you read the book, it just seems like the same old mess being regurgitated over and over and over again endlessly.
It's almost as though this should be a tight one-hour film documentary - not a full book?
Having said that, I'll finish with some notes I made here and there:
- the Saudi government spied on and hacked female activist Loujain al-Hathloul, furious at her for various things, but one being her attempts to prove that Saudi females should be allowed to drive cars. After capturing her, partly with the Pegasus software, she was eventually imprisoned:
She was repeatedly tortured and subjected to intense interrogation, including the use of electric shocks, waterboarding, flogging, and threats of rape and death (page 233).
- in El Salvador, strongman Nayib Bukele uses Pegasus against anyone who shows resistance to his tyrannical rule. As far as media in general, in El Salvador , his strategy (as documented in a 2022 US State Department Assessment) is to flood El Salvador with propaganda, demonize the institutions charged with debunking that propaganda - the free press and civil society - dominant public narratives, and repress dissent (page 246).
- Spain has had a long-term espionage campaign against Catalan.
In all our years studying cyber espionage, what we found in Spain was among the most audacious spying operations in scope and scale - an attempt to subject a large cross-section of Catalan civil society to targeted surveillance. [ ] Every Catalan president since 2010 had been hacked while in office, before election, or after retiring (pages 264/65).
- this is a good one! in Mexico, three obesity-prevention officials, who were supportive of a national tax on soda (pop) were hacked due to their work to reduce the consumption of sugary drinks in Mexico! And as far as Deibert could tell, the "hacks" of these three officials happened right after the President of Coca Cola called the Mexican president to complain about the soda tax (Page 187).
- the UK in general, and Tony Blair in particular, come off really badly as "butlers to the world" and sell outs to Saudi princes: the establishment has profited by serving the interests of dictators, kleptocrats, and oligarchs who take advantage of the country's favorable tax laws, exorbitant real estate market, and entourage of costly lawyers and PR consultants to launder their assets and enhance their public image (page 205)
Okay - I gotta stop somewhere... I guess I'll stop here... but the list is endless.
I didn't even mention the Saudi princess!
August 11, 2025
Israel has treated Palestine as a "laboratory", with successive waves of technological experimentation being conducted on an unwitting population, and then exported around the world as commercial products - similar in a way to China's experimentation with the latest surveillance and information control measures in Xinjiang or Tibet. But others I have spoken to have said that the reality is more complex. Although there is no doubt that Israel's control over the telecommunications system in the occupied territories has been instrumental in everything from population control to targeted assassinations, and closed-circuit TV cameras, and drones dominate checkpoints and settler territories, the reality of the occupation is that it has relied mostly on human intelligence and the raw application of military force
To quote another reviewer "the importance of this book is a 5, but the read is about a 3-so it get's a 4". This was a fascinating dive into an under-discussed topic, but the level of detail, plus the academic lens did make it a bit hard to get through at times. It's also quite disturbing to swallow just how much technology is weaponized by governments against their citizens and foreign actors.
Certainly, a topic I would love to continue to read on.
To quote another reviewer "the importance of this book is a 5, but the read is about a 3-so it get's a 4". This was a fascinating dive into an under-discussed topic, but the level of detail, plus the academic lens did make it a bit hard to get through at times. It's also quite disturbing to swallow just how much technology is weaponized by governments against their citizens and foreign actors.
Certainly, a topic I would love to continue to read on.
June 16, 2025
How do you review a book like this? Eye-opening for sure, discouraging, and angering. The first nearly third of the book is difficult to get into and there’s a lot of repetition. Get past that and you will be hooked by what little men in powerful positions will do because they’re afraid of journalists and activists. They’re so scared of losing power, losing money, they will spy on not only journalists and activists, but also on those people’s friends, families, and associates!
Repugnant despots purchase spyware (usually Israeli) to quash dissent, silence journalists, harass and sometimes kill just to hold on to power. Pathetic.
May organizations like Citizen Lab continue their excellent work despite governments trying to discredit them.
Repugnant despots purchase spyware (usually Israeli) to quash dissent, silence journalists, harass and sometimes kill just to hold on to power. Pathetic.
May organizations like Citizen Lab continue their excellent work despite governments trying to discredit them.
January 2, 2026
I really started out enjoying this book about the Citizen Lab and their investigations into covert surveillance. I had heard of the Citizen Lab and was surprised to learn it is part of the University of Toronto. However, I was really looking forward to learning about their methodology. Unfortunately this book never gets into that. Of course, I can understand why this is absent as they don’t want to give away their secrets but it was disappointing. Ultimately the book suffers from this; it merely discusses bad actors and their victims and responses. I ended up skipping large parts looking for what I was interested in, only to never find it.
August 6, 2025
Whereas the book is an interesting read if you are interested in learning of the successes of the Citizen Lab, the book unfortunately ignores the lab’s failures. Like M. B.-M. is mentioned only on a single page even though he contributed to multiple investigations. His resignation from the lab isn’t mentioned at all. Whereas his resignation wasn’t due to lab-related activities, it does show that the members of the Citizen Lab are regular people with sometimes significant flaws and not necessarily the flawless, altruistic superhumans that the book portrays them to be.
January 18, 2026
This is the real McCoy... the story of invasive spyware in our phones and computers, written by the founder of Citizen Lab, one of the leading public interest organizations at work to subvert the onslaught. It's refreshing to hear from someone that you feel you can trust, who lays it out in terminology that most of us can understand. There's some real thrillers in here. But there's just a lot, maybe too much to be able to contain. And, despite all the good work that's being done, there's no defense from spyware available for most of us... our technology seems to favor the sharks.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 17, 2025
An incredibly in-depth look at the use of illegal spyware now in common use around the world by most governments and the efforts of one Canadian group "Citizen Lab" to expose it. It is chilling to realize there are companies out there making hundreds of millions providing such software to people such as Putin & Trump. And even more amazing when you know that most of it starts in Israel!
Be aware-- NOTHING ON YOUR PHONE IS PRIVATE.
Be aware-- NOTHING ON YOUR PHONE IS PRIVATE.
April 28, 2025
An important reveal of cyber-spying by way too many world governments. Most use the Israeli company NSO's spyware, which the Israeli government allows them to sell to many sketchy, or downright nasty, countries. The book is a bit dry, and feels a bit self-congratulatory, but it contains information that is very troubling about modern surveillance states, especially how they can infect people's phones without having to click a bad link in what is called a zero day vulnerability.
January 16, 2026
An eye-opening (real-life) account of the depth and breadth of surveillance employed by all types of governments, from 3rd-world dictatorial regimes to western democracies, and efforts by the Citizens Lab at the University of Toronto to watch the watchers. Dense reading, somewhat overwhelming, important and educational.
April 8, 2025
Ron Deibert is the founder of Citizen Lab, fighting for digital security. This book describes some of the cases they’ve investigated. I was hoping for a thrilling, nail-biting, good vs. evil story, but I found it detailed and dry.
September 25, 2025
A lot of redundancies - same scenario, different names and countries. A lot of stories feel outdated.
Also a bit too much self-promotion.
The subject is eye-opening though and I wonder about the surveillance activities of the US now.
Maybe a sequel to come in a decade or two.
Also a bit too much self-promotion.
The subject is eye-opening though and I wonder about the surveillance activities of the US now.
Maybe a sequel to come in a decade or two.
March 14, 2025
Excellent book.
May 27, 2025
Review to come...
July 1, 2025
Incredibly eye opening about the tools within arms reach of anyone willing to pay the price.
August 20, 2025
Absolutely excellent book on the state of the art in current transnational digital repression and the incredible work of the Citizen Lab in being 'counterintelligence for civil society'.
August 22, 2025
I didn't know all this stuff about NSO and Pegasus.
September 7, 2025
Very important book to read.
September 11, 2025
Superb insider account
September 14, 2025
An excellent read, very sobering.
September 19, 2025
Fascinating content but poorly written. Too much repetition and convoluted.
October 12, 2025
Interesting, if a bit repetitive. Not Deibert's fault though! It's just that there are a lot of horrible governments/dictators/princes that will stop at nothing to keep their power.
December 2, 2025
Cyber espionage! Eye opening!!! Only read a few chapters, got what I wanted from it but too much information for me.
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews