# UK firm denies 'cyber-spy' deal with Egypt



## MaidenScotland (Jun 6, 2009)

The following is on the BBC website

A UK firm offered to supply "cyber-spy" software used by Egypt to target activists, the BBC has learned.

Documents found in the headquarters of the country's security service suggest it was used for a five-month trial period at the end of last year.

Hampshire-based Gamma International UK denies actually supplying the program, which infects computers with a virus that bugs online voice calls and email.

The foreign secretary says he will "critically" examine export controls.

After hearing evidence compiled by the BBC, William Hague, who speaks for the government on computer security issues, said: "Any export of goods that could be used for internal repression is something we would want to stop."

He also admitted the law governing software exports was a grey area.


Egyptians searched through secret police files after storming the building
The documents seen by the BBC were found at the looted headquarters of the Egyptian state security building earlier this year.

They describe an offer by Gamma International UK Ltd to supply a software programme called Finfisher.

Finfisher is described as a toolkit "used by many global security and intelligence services" for secretly gaining access to people's computers.

The files from the Egyptian secret police's Electronic Penetration Division described Gamma's product as "the only security system in the world" capable of bugging Skype phone conversations on the internet.

They detail a five-month trial by the Egyptian secret police which found the product had "proved to be an efficient electronic system for penetrating secure systems [which] accesses email boxes of Hotmail, Yahoo and Gmail networks".

Another document discovered by German public television network MDR is thought to reveal the first-known victims of the Finfisher program.

The document describes how, during the period of the software trial, the secret police successfully broke into and recorded encrypted Skype calls.

Sherif Mansour, from the US democracy group Freedom House, was in Egypt last year to help monitor parliamentary elections.

'Outsourcing repression'
Named in the document as a victim of the bugging, he blamed the Finfisher software and urged the British government to take action.

"We democracy and human rights activists already face a lot of troubles and get a lot of threats. I expect that from government but not from software companies.

"We have never looked to them to [be] enabling repression, to outsourcing repression."
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## DeadGuy (Jan 22, 2010)

The information can be collected with or without this software, the software is just a way to make it easier to "bug" calls and hack into e-mail accounts......It does leave trails though 

I know there's been a "revolution" and so on, but just as an advice.......People "should" still monitor their network activity, clean the "cookies" on their systems, and change their passwords every now and then......:ranger:


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