NEW: Someone was using spyware made by Barcelona-based offensive cybersecurity firm Variston in the UAE, according to Google.
Here we also reveal publicly for the 1st time that Variston purchased Italian zero-day research firm
Truel in 2018.
The acquisition was first reported by Intelligence Online but their article is behind a paywall so it's flown under the radar.
We have independent confirmation of that and the fact that in 2018 Variston was owned by Ralf Wegener and Ramanan Jayaraman.
https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/29/hackers-variston-spyware-uae-google/