We analyze a newly discovered Android implant that we attribute to Hacking Team and highlight the political subtext of the bait content and attack context. In addition, we expose the functionality and architecture of Hacking Team’s Remote Control system and operator tradecraft in never-before published detail.

By getting into the malware business the federal and potentially provincial governments of Canada would be confronted with an ongoing reality: is the role of government to maximally protect its citizens, including from criminals leveraging vulnerabilities to spy on Canadians, or is it to partially protect citizens so long as such protections do not weaken the state’s ability to secure itself from persons suspected of violating any Act of Parliament?

Citizen Lab has collaborated with Human Rights Watch to document Internet censorship in Ethiopia.

Cyber Steward Shahzad Ahmad, Director of Bytes for All (B4A), has won the Doughty Street Advocacy Award as part of Index on Censorship’s 2014 Freedom of Expression Awards. Ahmad was nominated in the advocacy category which recognizes activists fighting for free expression around the world.

A new Citizen Lab report has found that Canada-based Netsweeper filtering products have been identified on three ISPs in Somalia.

This post is the second in a series of posts that focus on the global proliferation and use of Hacking Team’s RCS spyware, which is sold exclusively to governments.

In this report, we identified three instances where Ethiopian journalist group ESAT was targeted with spyware in the space of two hours by a single attacker. In each case the spyware appeared to be RCS (Remote Control System), programmed and sold exclusively to governments by Milan-based Hacking Team.

Cyber Stewards Network partner Bytes for All (B4A) is working together with Privacy International (PI) to sue the government of the United Kingdom over their Tempora surveillance program.

What to do about the growing “Digital Arms” market? The spread of technologies like mobile phones and social networks have enabled corporations and governments to eavesdrop on a mass scale. Fulfilling the demand for surveillance tools, a range of companies now sell surveillance backdoors and vulnerabilities, described as “lawful intercept” software.

Citizen Lab Communications Officer Irene Poetranto authored an op-ed in The Jakarta Post on 14 December. In Time for greater transparency, Poetranto writes about the recent spying allegations by the Australian spy agency and the market for surveillance technologies.