Hi, my name is Ran Levy. Welcome back to Malicious Life in collaboration with Cybrees. cyber example.

The New York Times published an expose on the Tartak mobile messenger application on December 22nd, 2019.

The article suggested in so many words that Toutok was a covered spyware application. The developers behind Tutak did not take kindly to that

accusation. Giacomo Zianni was one of those developers. Born in the master borough of Venice, he has a degree in economics and international management.

Following his years as a student, Giacomo, more commonly referred to as Jack, worked largely in project management and marketing.

In 2019, he became the face of Tutak, and he is a good face to have. He is a handsome young man,

thin, nice hair and a perfectly shaved 5 o'clock shadow. Let's just say if he were trying to sell me covered spyware, I'd probably

get too lost in his pretty brown eyes to figure it out. In response to the time investigation, Jacques gave a written interview to

Kalije Times, the English language news branch of the United Arab Emirates government.

In it he denied that his app was of the United Arab Emirates government.

In it, he denied that his app was anything other

than a private politically neutral startup venture.

He suggested that any suspicion of wrongdoing might be motivated by just how popular his app was.

Then, at a certain point in the interview, he was asked the following question

quote are there any independent evaluations that can verify the app is secure

end quote he responded confidently.

The irony is that our accusers requested a technical analysis by a former NSA employee who concluded that TOTOC simply does what it claims to do and really nothing more.

No spyware, no backdoors and no malware."

End quote.

Okay, let's take a step back.

Let's face it, if you've listened to our previous episode, you've probably concluded

that Tautak is in fact spyware. But according to Jack, a former NSA employee had verified that it

...