Researchers find German-made spyware across globe

London, Mar 14 - The discovery of a group of servers linked to an elusive espionage campaign is providing new details about a high-tech piece of spy software that some fear may be targeting dissidents living under oppressive regimes. A Canadian research center said yesterday that it had identified 25 different countries that host servers linked to FinFisher, a Trojan horse program which can dodge anti-virus protections to steal data, log keystrokes, eavesdrop on Skype calls, and turn microphones and webcams into live surveillance devices. Citizen Lab, based at the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs, said that Canada, Mexico, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Serbia, and Vietnam were among the host countries newly identified in yesterday's report. That alone doesn't necessarily mean those countries' governments are using FinFisher, a program distributed by British company Gamma International, but it is an indication of the spyware's reach. Morgan Marquis-Boire, the report's lead author, said his goal was Òto show the proliferation of this type of active intrusion and surveillance.Ó In telephone interview, he said that the world of government surveillance was changing and urged journalists, aid workers, and activists to take note. ÒIt's not just phone tapping,Ó he said. ÒIt's installing a backdoor on your computer to record your Skype conversations and go through your email.Ó Advocacy group Privacy International described the report as evidence that Gamma had sold FinFisher to repressive regimes, calling it a Òpotential breach of UK export laws.Ó Gamma did not comment on the report. The company, based in the English town of Andover, has come under increasing scrutiny after a sales pitch for the spyware was recovered from an Egyptian state security building shortly after the toppling of dictator Hosni Mubarak in 2011. Reporting by Bloomberg News subsequently identified opposition activists from the Persian Gulf kingdom of Bahrain as targets of the company's surveillance software. The discovery of FinFisher servers in countries run by authoritarian governments such as Turkmenistan and Ethiopia have raised further questions about the company's practices. On Tuesday, Paris-based journalists' rights group Reporters Without Borders named Gamma one of its five Òcorporate enemies of the Internet.Ó The report said evidence for the Ethiopian government's use of FinFisher was particularly strong, explaining that Citizen Lab had found an example of the spyware which spread through a booby-trapped email purporting to carry images of Ethiopian opposition figures.