The following remarks were delivered by Professor Ron Deibert, Director of the Citizen Lab, to the Internet Governance Forum’s High Level Leader’s Meeting, October 21, 2013, Bali Indonesia.

This post describes the results of a comprehensive global Internet scan for the command and control servers of FinFisher’s surveillance software. It also details the discovery of a campaign using FinFisher in Ethiopia that may have been used to target individuals linked to an opposition group. Additionally, it provides examination of a FinSpy Mobile sample found in the wild, which appears to have been used in Vietnam.

After years spent as one of the world’s most strictly controlled information environments, the government of Burma has recently begun to open up access to previously censored online content. Recent OpenNet Initiative testing has confirmed these changes, finding a variety of opposition websites, critical blogs and foreign news sites to be accessible after years of blocking. This ONI blog post discusses recent developments in Burma and reports on the results of testing conducted in Burma in August 2012.

The September 2012 issue of Southeast Asia CyberWatch covers related developments in Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.

This report, written and coordinated by Citizen Lab Technical Advisor Morgan Marquis-Boire, analyzes several samples we believe to be mobile variants of the FinFisher Spy Kit targeting iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Windows Mobile and Symbian platforms. It is a follow-on to a previous research brief, From Bahrain with Love: FinFisher's Spy Kit Exposed?, that analyzed several pieces of malware targeting Bahraini dissidents.

Citizen Lab Post-Doctoral Fellow Stefania Milan will be participating at the Inter-Asia Roundtable 2012: Methodological and Conceptual Issues in Cyber Activism Research conference at the National University of Singapore on August 30-31, 2012.

The Citizen Lab published the inaugural issues of the weekly Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Cyber Watch (replacing Iran Cyber Watch) and the monthly Southeast Asia Cyber Watch.

The inaugural issue of Southeast Asia Cyber Watch contains news articles from Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia and Vietnam.

Additional evidence gathered by the Citizen Lab from Burma since the publication of Behind Blue Coat has provided further confirmation that Blue Coat’s devices are presently in use in the country.

Although Blue Coat has recently acknowledged the presence of their devices in Syria, this brief contributes to previous findings of devices in the country, documents additional devices in use in Syria, and identifies Blue Coat devices actively in use in Burma.