Citizen Lab Senior Research Fellow Bill Marczak spoke to ABC Australia regarding the proxy server for the remote intrusion software FinFisher found in Sydney, Australia.

This post describes the results of Internet scanning we recently conducted to identify the users of FinFisher, a sophisticated and user-friendly spyware suite sold exclusively to governments. We devise a method for querying FinFisher’s “anonymizing proxies” to unmask the true location of the spyware’s master servers. Since the master servers are installed on the premises of FinFisher customers, tracing the servers allows us to identify which governments are likely using FinFisher. In some cases, we can trace the servers to specific entities inside a government by correlating our scan results with publicly available sources.

In an article entitled “Fishing in troubled waters,” Pakistan’s English newspaper DAWN highlighted issues surrounding surveillance and cyber crime in the country.

The Lahore High Court in Pakistan is set to hear a case regarding the discovery of spyware suite FinFisher in the country. The lawsuit, brought by Cyber Steward Partner Bytes for All, contends that the government contravened the Privacy Act by indiscriminately spying on its citizens.

Deutsche Welle reported that German state prosecutors have started preliminary investigations into whether the German-developed spy software FinFisher is being used by foreign intelligence agencies against targets inside Germany.

An article by The Verge on the persecution of Bahraini activists Moosa Abd-Ali Ali, Jaffar Al Hasabi, and Saeed Al-Shehabi features the Citizen Lab’s extensive analysis into FinFisher, a line of remote intrusion and surveillance software developed by Munich-based Gamma International GmbH, conducted by Senior Security Researcher Morgan Marquis-Boire and Research Fellow Bill Marzcak.

Privacy International has filed a criminal complaint with the UK’s National Cyber Crime Unit requesting police investigation into allegations that the computer and telecommunications data of Bahraini democracy activists were subject to unlawful surveillance, which cites reports authored by Citizen Lab on the presence of FinFisher in Bahrain, as well the global proliferation of the software.

A public interest litigation case launched by CSN Partner Bytes For All (B4A) at the Lahore High Court has been met with obstacles during court proceedings. Despite a court order to look into the matter and produce a report in one month, the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) has failed to do so.

An article in the Washington Post, titled “Research shows how MacBook Webcams can spy on their users without warning,” discussed two of the Citizen Lab’s research outputs.