Skopje, Turkey, Belgium, Spain and Italy are among the 32 countries using the spyware software, FinFisher.
A recent study by the University of Toronto's research arm, Citizen Lab, reveals that the number of governments using FinFisher has increased significantly.
FinFisher, a “legal surveillance” suite developed by German company Gamma Group and selectively sold to governments and law enforcement agencies to track suspected criminals, has been linked to at least 32 governments around the world.
[alert variation=”alert-info”]Citizen Lab researchers have been studying the use of spyware, such as the FinFisher spyware, for years, providing revealing evidence about their use by government agencies.[/alert]
FinFisher has been used in the past for illegal government surveillance programs
As evidenced by numerous pieces of evidence, the spyware is not only used to assist law enforcement investigations but also for illicit purposes, with several states such as Ethiopia and Bahrain having been accused in the past of using Finfisher to monitor and deter their political opponents.
The way the spyware works is by transmitting information from infected computers to C&C servers using intermediate proxies – also known as relays – which are similar to those of the Tor network, but without the complex encryption system.
And while in the past it was not possible to distinguish between FinFisher relays and C&C servers, recent discoveries have allowed the Citizen Lab research team to detect the subtle differences between the two, successfully mapping multiple FinFisher networks around the world.
According to the research findings, there are now 32 countries that are using FinFisher spyware more than ever before. These include*: Angola, Bangladesh, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Czech Republic, Egypt, Ethiopia, Gabon, Indonesia, Italy, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Lebanon, Macedonia, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco Nigeria, Oman, Paraguay, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Slovenia, Spain, Taiwan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Venezuela , and South Africa.
*Countries where FinFisher spyware was not observed prior to this research are highlighted in bold.
