Gamma Group is an Anglo-German technology company that sells

surveillance Surveillance is the monitoring of behavior, many activities, or information for the purpose of information gathering, influencing, managing, or directing. This can include observation from a distance by means of electronic equipment, such as ...

software to

government A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a State (polity), state. In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive (government), execu ...

s and

police force The police are a constituted body of people empowered by a state with the aim of enforcing the law and protecting the public order as well as the public itself. This commonly includes ensuring the safety, health, and possessions of citizen ...

s around the world. The company has been strongly criticised by

human rights organisation A human rights group, or human rights organization, is a non-governmental organization which advocates for human rights through identification of their violation, collecting incident data, its analysis and publication, promotion of public awareness ...

s for selling its

FinFisher FinFisher, also known as FinSpy, is surveillance software marketed by Lench IT Solutions plc, which markets the spyware through law enforcement channels. FinFisher can be covertly installed on targets' computers by exploiting security lapses in ...

software to undemocratic regimes such as

Egypt Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...

and

Bahrain Bahrain, officially the Kingdom of Bahrain, is an island country in West Asia. Situated on the Persian Gulf, it comprises a small archipelago of 50 natural islands and an additional 33 artificial islands, centered on Bahrain Island, which mak ...

. Following the

Arab Spring The Arab Spring () was a series of Nonviolent resistance, anti-government protests, Rebellion, uprisings, and Insurgency, armed rebellions that spread across much of the Arab world in the early 2010s. It began Tunisian revolution, in Tunisia ...

protests in 2011, activists from Bahrain identified suspicious emails which were identified as social engineering attempts to persuade them to launch applications containing malicious software. The emails were passed to analysts who identified

malware Malware (a portmanteau of ''malicious software'')Tahir, R. (2018)A study on malware and malware detection techniques . ''International Journal of Education and Management Engineering'', ''8''(2), 20. is any software intentionally designed to caus ...

which would give FinFisher access to the infected computers. The

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public university, public research university whose main campus is located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park (Toronto), Queen's Park in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was founded by ...

's CitizenLab conducted an investigation of Gamma which identified "33 likely government users of FinFisher in 32 countries, based on the presence of a FinFisher master at an IP address in a country or belonging to a specific government department." In 2014, Gamma Group was hacked by a hacker calling herself

Phineas Fisher Phineas Fisher (also known as Phineas Phisher, Subcowmandante Marcos) is an unidentified hacktivist and self-proclaimed anarchist revolutionary. Notable hacks include the surveillance company Gamma International, Hacking Team, the Sindicat De ...

and a 40 Gigabyte dump of information was released detailing Gamma's 'client lists, price lists, source code, details about the effectiveness of FinFisher malware, user and support documentation, a list of classes/tutorials, and much more.' Further details about Gamma's capabilities can be found in the Surveillance Industry Index. Despite this hack and the extent of negative publicity about Gamma's activities, FinFisher was reported to be gaining in popularity around the world with numerous governments.

References

External links

* {{Authority control Hacking in the 2010s Spyware companies Espionage scandals and incidents