Spyware Maker Accused of Peddling to Autocrats is Gutted By Hacker

The clients, prices and techniques of the manufacturer of the FinFisher cyberweapon are circulating the Web, following a security breach, ZDNet reports.

Anglo-German Gamma Group allegedly sells FinFisher to nation states and police agencies.

A hacker, operating under codename GammaGroupPR, has published 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.”

Read the rest at ThreatWatch, Nextgov’s regularly updated index of cyber breaches.

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