Russia used Cellebrite to extract opposition iPhone data

Russian authorities used forensic technology from the Israeli firm Cellebrite to extract data from the iPhone of detained opposition politician Andrey Pivovarov in June 2021, three months after the company publicly announced it had terminated all contracts with Russian government customers. The findings, detailed in a forensic investigation published by the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab, are supported by both digital artifacts on the device and an official Russian government forensic report.

Pivovarov, the former director of the pro-democracy nonprofit Open Russia, was removed from a flight at St. Petersburg Airport and detained by security services on May 31, 2021. His iPhone 12 and Apple MacBook were confiscated without his consent or passwords. The devices remained in state custody until 2023, after Pivovarov had been sentenced to four years in prison on charges of managing an "undesirable" organization. He was later freed in an August 2024 prisoner exchange between Russia and the United States.

Citizen Lab researchers, contacted by Pivovarov in late 2025, conducted a forensic analysis of his iPhone. They identified traces of Cellebrite's Universal Forensic Extraction...