Cellebrite

Cellebrite DI Ltd. is a digital forensics company headquartered in Petah Tikva, Israel, that provides tools for law enforcement agencies as well as enterprise companies and service providers to collect, review, analyze and manage digital data. Their flagship product series is the Cellebrite UFED.
Cellebrite's largest shareholder is Sun Corporation, which is based in Nagoya, Japan. The Cellebrite company has fourteen offices around the globe, including business centers in Washington, D.C., Munich and Singapore. In 2021, the Cellebrite company was valued at approximately $2.4 billion.

History

Cellebrite was established in Israel in 1999 by Avi Yablonka, Yaron Baratz, and Yuval Aflalo.
Ron Serber joined Cellebrite in 2001, and Yossi Carmil joined in 2004. Since 2005, they both served as co-CEOs until Ron Serber left the company in 2020. Carmil had now retired as CEO in 2024 with the position currently held by Thomas Hogan.
Cellebrite first manufactured hardware and software that offered compressive phone-to-phone data transfer devices, contact synchronization, and content transfer tools for mobile phones, intended for use by wireless carrier sales and support staff in retail stores.
In 2007, Cellebrite established an independent mobile forensics division aimed at producing digital forensics and intelligence tools for use by law enforcement, intelligence agencies, military branches, corporate security and investigations, law firms, and private digital forensic examiners. That year, Cellebrite was acquired by FutureDial Incorporated and one of its major shareholders, Sun Corporation in Japan.
In 2017, Cellebrite's Mobile Lifecycle division was rebranded as Mobilogy, which produces hardware and software for phone-to-phone data transfer, backup, mobile applications electronic software distribution, and data analysis tools.
In 2019, Israeli Growth Partners invested $110 million in Cellebrite.
In January 2020, Cellebrite announced the acquisition of US-based BlackBag Technologies, Inc., a forensics company with a focus on computer forensics. The acquisition allowed Cellebrite to expand its digital intelligence solution offerings to include data collection tools from computers.
In April 2021, Cellebrite announced plans to go public via a merger with TWC Tech Holdings II Corporation, a blank-check firm. Once completed, Cellebrite would become a publicly listed company on the Nasdaq under the new ticker symbol, "CLBT"; the pro forma implied equity value of Cellebrite post-merger is expected to be approximately $2.4 billion. In July 2021, a group of civil society organizations signed a letter arguing that the company should not be allowed to go public before demonstrating compliance with human rights. In August 2021, Cellebrite announced the completion of the merger. The Nasdaq ticker symbols were renamed to CLBT and CLBTW on the announcement day.
In July 2024, Cellebrite announced that it was acquiring Cyber Technology Services, a US-based cybersecurity company licensed to work on federal projects with maximum security clearance.
In June 2025, Cellebrite acquired Corellium, a Florida-based startup specializing in virtualized mobile device environments for security research, for $200 million. The deal included $150 million in cash, $20 million in restricted stock, and up to $30 million in performance-based cash tied to unspecified milestones over two years.

Subsidiaries

BlackBag Technologies, Inc.: US-based subsidiary
Cellebrite Asia Pacific Pte Ltd: Singapore-based subsidiary
Cellebrite Federal Solutions: US-based subsidiary
Cellebrite Global Training Headquarters: US-based subsidiary
Cellebrite GmbH: Germany-based subsidiary - registered in October 2008
Cellebrite UK Limited: UK based subsidiary
Technology

Cellebrite's products are classified as "dual-use civilian services," and not security-related, a distinction which it is argued allows them to operate without serious oversight from the Israeli government.
In 2007, Cellebrite introduced the first version of their Universal Forensic Extraction Device, a portable tool capable of extracting the contents of a cell phone, which became popular with law enforcement agencies around the world.
In 2019, Cellebrite announced a new version of their flagship UFED product called UFED Premium. The company claimed that it can unlock iOS devices including those running iOS 12.3 and Android phones such as the Galaxy S9.
In 2021, Moxie Marlinspike, creator of the encrypted messaging app Signal, pointed to several vulnerabilities in Cellebrite's UFED and Physical Analyzer software that allowed for arbitrary code execution on Windows computers running the software. One exploit he detailed involved the UFED scanning a specially formatted file, which could then be used to execute arbitrary code on the computer running the UFED. Marlinspike wrote that the code could then " not just the Cellebrite report being created in that scan, but also "all previous and future generated Cellebrite reports" from all previously scanned devices and all future scanned devices in any arbitrary way." Marlinspike also found that Cellebrite software was bundled with out-of-date FFmpeg DLL files from 2012, which lacked over 100 subsequent security updates. Windows Installer packages, extracted from the Windows installer for iTunes and signed by Apple, were also found, which he said raised legal concerns. Cellebrite responded that the company "is committed to protecting the integrity of our customers' data, and we continually audit and update our software in order to equip our customers with the best digital intelligence solutions available." The report by Signal followed an announcement by Cellebrite in 2020 that it had developed technology to crack encrypted messages in the Signal app, a claim the company later retracted and downplayed. The announcement by Marlinspike raised questions about the integrity of data extracted by the software, and prompted Cellebrite to patch some of the vulnerabilities found by Signal and to remove full support for analyzing iPhones.

Law enforcement and government assistance

Bangladesh

The software has been sold to the Rapid Action Battalion in Bangladesh. After a connection between Cellebrite and the extrajudicial killings of the RAB was reported in 2021, Cellebrite announced they would cease selling products to the organization. It is likely the RAB can continue to use the existing Cellebrite products they had already purchased.

Belarus and Russia

Cellebrite's UFED program was used to persecute the democratic opposition in Belarus and Russia; Vladimir Putin used the technology against his political opponents for many years. In March 2021, after finding out that technology was used in the Lyubov Sobol affair, a Jerusalem activist filed a lawsuit against the company in the Israeli Supreme Court. The company announced the termination of cooperation with Russia and Belarus shortly afterward. Nevertheless, in 2023, the phone of the anti-war activist Dmitry Ivanov was accessed by the FSB via Cellebrite products.

Botswana

In May 2021, the Committee to Protect Journalists reported that police in Botswana used a UFED device sold by Cellebrite to extract data from the phone of journalist Oratile Dikologang, the digital editor and co-founder of the Botswana People's Daily News website after a senior office ordered that his device be searched for information about "offensive" Facebook posts.

Brazil

In March 2021, the Civil Police of Rio de Janeiro State opened an investigation into the mysterious death of 4-year-old Henry Borel. The boy's stepfather Jairinho and his mother Monique Medeiros were arrested for obstructing the investigation into the boy's death and were being investigated for homicide. Rio de Janeiro police used Cellebrite devices to extract deleted WhatsApp messages between Jairinho, Medeiros, and Henry's nanny, which the department described as "essential technical evidence" for the case.

European Union

In 2019, Cellebrite advertised their products as an effective way to combat refugees in the European Union, stating that 77% of refugees arrived in Europe without documentation, though 43% had a smartphone.

Hong Kong

In August 2020, MIT Technology Review reported that Cellebrite sold its services to the Hong Kong Police Force for use in unlocking phones of detained demonstrators during the 2019–20 Hong Kong protests. As of October 7, 2020, the company announced that it would stop selling its solutions and services to customers in Hong Kong and China as a result of a change in U.S. regulations. However, in 2021 The Intercept reported the software was still being sold to China.

Latvia

In 2024 Latvia, the State Revenue Service acquired Cellebrite software for €427,270 to combat tax evasion and the shadow economy. The software enables the analysis of financial information and electronic records, facilitating data collection and correlation studies during targeted control measures. Cellebrite would be also used to extract data from iOS and Android devices, limited to specific entities identified as high-risk for tax evasion, requiring physical access by tax inspectors.

Myanmar

In 2021, the New York Times reported that Myanmar's state budget included MacQuisition, a forensic software product made by Cellebrite subsidiary BlackBag Technologies that is used to extract data from Apple computers. Court documents also showed that police in Myanmar reported using Cellebrite forensic technology to obtain data from the phones of two Reuters journalists, who were tried and convicted in 2018 for publishing evidence of a Rohingya massacre in Myanmar in 2017. A spokesperson for Cellebrite stated that Cellebrite stopped selling to Myanmar in 2018 and that BlackBag had not sold to Myanmar after being acquired by Cellebrite in 2020.