Mozilla to FinSpy: stop disguising your "lawful interception" spyware as Firefox

Vatic Note:  Pretty soon we won’t know who to trust,  but then,  is that the point? Is firefox causing the spies such problems that they are putting this out to chase us all back to microsoft?   I don’t know, but we are warned and can watch for such indicators that will tell us one way or the other.  Don’t act until confirmed.

At least Mozilla has acted immediately on it and done so legally.  Also notice the finspy company is British.  That does not seem like an accident either.  Notice below it does not mention whether the United States is in that list of countries using the spy ware.   I guess we are warned and to just stay ahead of it.  Its explains why I was losing control of my cursor when trying to post.  I had to go to coffee shop to finish blogs.

Now we know why.  When are we going to get fed up with all this?  I am almost there.  Anyone else?  Start local with your neighbors and grow from there, that is what we are doing here.  Its working on many different levels.  So, nothing ventured, nothing gained.  Give it a shot.  You can not lose. 

Mozilla to FinSpy: stop disguising your “lawful interception” spyware as Firefox
http://12160.info/video/governments-use-spyware-disguised-as-firefox-n3
by Site *ADMINS* , the 12160 blog, on May 4, 2013

The Mozilla Foundation has sent a legal threat to Gamma International, a UK company that makes a product called “FinSpy” that is used by governments, including brutal dictatorships to spy on dissidents. FinSpy allows these governments to hijack their citizens’ screens, cameras, hard-drives and keyboards. Gamma disguises this spyware as copies of Firefox, Mozilla’s flagship free/open browser.

Gamma International markets its software as a “remote monitoring” program that government agencies can use to take control of computers and snoop on data and communications.

In theory, it could be legitimately used for surveillance efforts by crime fighting agencies, but in practice, it has popped up as a spy tool unleashed against dissident movements operating against repressive regimes.

Citizen Lab researchers have seen it used against dissidents from Bahrain and Ethiopia. And in a new report, set to be released today, they’ve found it in 11 new countries: Hungary, Turkey, Romania, Panama, Lithuania, Macedonia, South Africa, Pakistan, Nigeria, Bulgaria, and Austria. That brings the total number of countries that have been spotted with FinFisher to 36.

To date, Citizen Lab researchers have found three samples of FinSpy that masquerades as Firefox, including a “demo” version of the spyware according to Morgan Marquis-Boire, a security researcher at the Citizen Lab, who works as a Google Security Engineer.

Marquis-Boire says his work at Citizen Lab is independent from his day job at Google.

Mozilla Takes Aim at Spyware That Masquerades as Firefox [Robert McMillan/Wired]