According to a report by Voice of America, PacketLogic devices produced by Canadian company Sandvine are being used to track internet communication in Turkey and Northern Syria.

Citizen Lab said it discovered the hacking after a European cybersecurity company reported that network service providers in two unidentified countries were trying to compromise their users using a powerful hacking technique known as network injection.

Citizen Lab scoured the internet for signs of the spying and eventually traced the activity to the Turkish provinces of Adana, Hatay, Gaziantep, Diyarbakir and to the Turkish capital, Ankara, as well as parts of northern Syria and Egypt.

Network injection — so-called because the malicious software is injected into everyday internet traffic by whoever controls the network — has long been feared as a particularly powerful form of government spying.

Although the identities of those being spied on in Turkey and Egypt aren’t clear, CitizenLab officials said that the devices appeared to be installed on the network belonging to Turk Telekom.

According to CitizenLab some activities may have targeted YPG forces.