Spyware maker that peddles to autocrats is gutted by hacker

The clients, prices and techniques of the maker of the FinFisher cyberweapon are circulating throughout the web, following a security breach.

Anglo-German Gamma International UK Ltd. allegedly sells FinFisher to police agencies.

A hacker, operating under codename “GammaGroupPR,” has posted notes across social media outlets about the purported infiltration and dumped the data.

One Reddit post reads:

Two years ago their software was found being widely used by governments in the middle east, especially Bahrain, to hack and spy on the computers and phones of journalists and dissidents.

Gamma Group (the company that makes FinFisher) denied having anything to do with it, saying they only sell their hacking tools to 'good' governments, and those authoritarian regimes most [sic] have stolen a copy.

...a couple days ago [when] I hacked in and made off with 40GB of data from Gamma's networks. I have hard proof they knew they were selling (and still are) to people using their software to attack Bahraini activists, along with a whole lot of other stuff in that 40GB.

A spreadsheet “explains that FinFisher performed well against 35 top antivirus products, showing how the sophisticated malware efficiently defeats detection,” ZDnet reports. “The documents also reveal usage statistics by country.”

The technology can be deployed against victims using a fake Adobe Flash Player updater and a Firefox plugin for RealPlayer apps.

One document shows prices for malware targeting the recent Apple iOS version 7 platform.

“The highly secret surveillance software can remotely control any computer it infects, copy files, intercept Skype calls, log keystrokes -- and now we know it can do much, much more,” according to ZDNet