Israeli ad firm Discover-Tech heavily targeted Starlink users, likely to spy on them, researchers say
Researchers at TrendAI, part of Trend Micro, found that Israeli ad tech company Discover-Tech was the top bidder for ads shown to Starlink users in more than 100 countries, likely to locate or watch them, six people told Reuters. Citizen Lab had already accused the firm of using ads to deliver spyware.
An Israeli advertising technology company, Discover-Tech, heavily targeted users of SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet service in what was likely an effort to spy on them, according to researchers at TrendAI, a unit of the Tokyo-based cybersecurity company Trend Micro. Six people familiar with the matter told Reuters, in a report published on 27 October, that a company TrendAI had described only by the codename 'Shadow-Earth-79' is Discover-Tech.
Using advertising data from its own telemetry, TrendAI found that the firm had become one of the world's biggest bidders for ads aimed at Starlink users, with about 12.9% of that traffic over a 90-day period, almost five times its share of ordinary ad traffic. Between June 2024 and June 2026 it was the top bidder on Starlink traffic in 105 countries, including some where Starlink is banned or restricted, according to the report as described by Reuters and the German tech site heise. In several countries the targeting focused on government agencies connecting via Starlink.
Every time an advertiser bids for a spot in an online ad auction, it receives data such as the user's location, IP address and device type. Collected over time and combined with other information, that data can be used to identify people, follow them across the web and, in some cases, target them with surveillance software. TrendAI said the company's code had features 'consistent with tools designed for surveillance and data collection'.
On 15 October, the same day TrendAI published its report, the Canadian research group Citizen Lab and the New York ad tech firm Confiant named Discover-Tech, saying it abused the ad bidding process and that its ads had appeared inside dozens of sensitive networks of media organisations, governments and tech firms. Citizen Lab said the company acted as a pipeline for 'zero-click' spyware. Google, Comcast and other companies said they had removed Discover-Tech from their ad platforms. It is not clear whether specific people were targeted or whether the firm acted for any government.