Mapping FinFisher’s Continuing Proliferation

citizenlab.org

46 points·cinquemb··7 comments

Wow, this is a really detailed report, well worth browsing through. It not only shows the technical characteristics of FinFishers proliferation, but also has short stories on each countries' server, who the operator might be and the political and judicial context.

Fun fact: Finfisher offer pentest services, but they just take the money and outsource the tests to contractors for half the price.

I'm also alarmed at the number of European countries using this software...

> I'm also alarmed at the number of European countries using this software...

Why? A number of EU countries have set up front companies to re-sell their spy agencies skills in mass surveillance to assorted dictators and despots. They need a test-bed for development and the local population is the obvious choice. What they are reselling is always the previous generation while they use the new, more advanced and intrusive version locally.

It's all about protecting the children and keeping us safe from terrorists. It's not about mass surveillance. Honest. And look at the money made by exporting our technology!

I laughed at the fact that they revealed the master location information via googling "what is my ip" and checking out the weather report.

If the FF didn't leave any trace and its proxies are fully transparent, do you think there's a way to detect that?

Some sort of timing attack? It also might be possible for google to detect them and shut them down since they use their services to route all the proxied requests to, but that would probably be difficult.

What's the next step? How do we stop this?

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