Cyber Attacks On Activists Traced To Gamma Group's FinFisher Spyware 54
Sherloqq sends this quote from a Bloomberg report:
"FinFisher, a spyware sold by U.K.- based Gamma Group, can secretly take remote control of a computer, copying files, intercepting Skype calls and logging every keystroke. For the past year, human rights advocates and virus hunters have scrutinized FinFisher, seeking to uncover potential abuses. They got a glimpse of its reach when a FinFisher sales pitch to Egyptian state security was uncovered after that country's February 2011 revolution. In December, anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks published Gamma promotional videos showing how police could plant FinFisher on a target's computer. ... Researchers believe they’ve identified copies of FinFisher, based on an examination of malicious software e-mailed to Bahraini activists, they say. ... The findings illustrate how the largely unregulated trade in offensive hacking tools is transforming surveillance, making it more intrusive as it reaches across borders and peers into peoples’ digital devices. From anywhere on the globe, the software can penetrate the most private spaces, turning on computer web cameras and reading documents as they are being typed."
Re:Gamma Group - For All Your Fascist E-Needs (Score:2, Interesting)
i dont think a company that sells spyware to government entities is worried about their public image...
Moving to other platforms? (Score:4, Interesting)
With all the malware tools becoming available for Windows and Mac, perhaps Linux, I wonder if this will encourage people to move to lesser known platforms that would function just as well.
Moving to a non-mainstream CPU and OS would stop most malware in its tracks. Making sure that cross-platform items like Java are either not run, or are run in a chrooted, jailed space, perhaps as a different user, might also be the par for the course.
Hmm... time to see where I put the old Indy and see if Chromium or Firefox would port to IRIX without some substantial effort or rewriting... Barring that, there are always some old POWER5 boxes on eBay with graphical consoles, as well as SPARC boxes.
Maybe it is time to go back to the days of Solaris for being on the Internet.