Categories: ICT Ethiopia suspected of using spyware to spy on journalists and opposition members

From Ethiopia to Vietnam, researchers map reach of German-made government spy software
LONDON — The discovery of a group of servers linked to an elusive espionage campaign is providing new details about a high-tech piece of spy software that some fear may be targeting dissidents living under oppressive regimes.
A Canadian research center said Wednesday that it had identified 25 different countries that host servers linked to FinFisher, a Trojan horse program which can dodge anti-virus protections to steal data, log keystrokes, eavesdrop on Skype calls, and turn microphones and webcams into live surveillance devices.
The report said evidence for the Ethiopian government’s use of FinFisher was particularly strong, explaining that Citizen Lab had found an example of the spyware which spread through a booby-trapped email purporting to carry images of Ethiopian opposition figures. Once the Trojan was downloaded, it would connect to a server being hosted by Ethiopia’s national telecommunications provider, Ethio Telecom.
It’s not clear who the Trojan’s intended targets might have been, although online messages have provided key evidence in several recent terror cases that have resulted in the incarceration of media and opposition figures.
Journalist Reyot Alemu was arrested in 2011 after she was caught attempting to anonymously email articles to a U.S.-based opposition website, while opposition leader Andualem Arage is currently appealing the life sentence he received last year after authorities got hold of his Skype conversation with an alleged enemy of the Ethiopian state.
Ethiopian opposition leader and Bucknell University academic Berhanu Nega said he had no proof that he or his colleagues had been hacked by the Ethiopian government, but he said he wouldn’t be surprised.
He said opposition figures had long been careful on the phone or over email, but he called FinFisher “the most pervasive kind of spying that we have been confronted with.
“We’re now trying to clear our computers.”
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