Slashdot Mirror
Finfisher Spyware Use By Governments Expanding, Masquerades as Firefox
nk497 writes "Mozilla has sent a cease-and-desist order to Gamma International, after it was revealed the controversial creator of spyware for governments was disguising itself as Firefox on PCs. 'We cannot abide a software company using our name to disguise online surveillance tools that can be — and in several cases actually have been — used by Gamma's customers to violate citizens' human rights and online privacy,' Mozilla said."
DavidGilbert99 writes on the wider implications of the Citizen Lab report: "Governmental spying software has been in the news a lot in recent months and today Citizen Lab has revealed its latest findings, showing that one of the most prolific tools in use, Finfisher, is now in use in 36 countries around the world [beware the auto playing video ads with sound]." And, Voulnet adds "According to analysis and report by CitizenLab of the Gamma FinFisher trojan spyware used against dissidents in the middle east and around the world, the FinFisher codebase uses the LGPL GNU Multiple Precision Arithmetic Library, possibly without adhering to its distribution restrictions."
If I were Mozilla I'd look into suing for defamation, more specifically libel. If you have been libeled, you don't even need to prove damages, at least in the US, according to this website: http://www.wikihow.com/Sue-for-Defamation
I applaud Mozilla's decision to start legal action against them, but more importantly, how is it legal for this company to operate? Perhaps this is naïve, but how is it legal for a company to operate by providing surveillance software to governments? Does the State Department approve which nation's they can sell to?
The firefox part has nothing to do with "open source" or GPL violation.
Gamma isn't using a single line of code from firefox.
Instead they are abusing Mozilla's trademark.
This is a simple classical violation of trademark law. (and a clear one).
The LGPL violations are regarding some subcomponent used by finfisher, namely libGMP.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I believe this company has already found itself on anonymous' radar. Watch out for fun on the horizon as I expect them to exploit the finfisher C&C servers for their own gain and to the embarassment of finfisher's customers.