Angry Bird Rios
Joined: 15 Sep 2011 Location: Flinging through the air
|
Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2011 10:06 am Post subject: UK co. offers Skype spy tech to Egypt regime |
|
|
Can anyone confirm that Skype's supposed end-to-end voice encryption technology has been broken?
British firm offered spying software to Egyptian regime � documents
Gamma International's Finfisher program would have enabled government spies to monitor activists and censor websites
A British company offered to sell a program to the Egyptian security services that experts say could infect computers, hack into web-based email and communications tools such as Skype and even take control of other groups' systems remotely, according to documents seen by the Guardian.
Two Egyptian human rights activists found the documents amid hundreds of batons and torture equipment when they broke into the headquarters of the regime's State Security Investigations service (SSI) last month.
One of the papers, in English and headed Finfisher Proposal: Commercial Offer, contained an offer dated 29 June 2010 to provide "FinSpy" software, hardware, installation and training to the SSI for �287,000 (�255,000). The name on the invoice, dated Tuesday 29 June 2010, was Gamma International UK Limited.
Other documents, written in Arabic and marked "ultimately confidential", state that after being offered a "free trial version" of Gamma's Finfisher software to test its ability to hack into email accounts, the SSI concluded it was "a high-level security system" that could get into email accounts of Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo, as well as allowing "full control" of the computers of "targeted elements". It went on to describe the software's "success in breaking through personal accounts on Skype network, which is considered the most secure method of communication used by members of the elements of the harmful activity because it is encrypted"... |
|