Spyware Leaves Trail to Beaten Activist Through Microsoft Flaw

On a Monday in July, Ahmed Mansoor sat in his study in Dubai and made the mistake of clicking on a Microsoft Word attachment that arrived in an e-mail, labeled “very important” in Arabic, from a sender he thought he recognized.

With that click, the pro-democracy activist unwittingly downloaded spyware that seized on a flaw in the Microsoft Corp. program to take over his computer and record every keystroke. The hackers infiltrated his digital life so deeply they still accessed his personal e-mail even after he changed his password.