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Article

20 Sep 2011

Author:
Stephen Grey, BBC

UK firm denies 'cyber-spy' deal with Egypt

A UK firm offered to supply "cyber-spy" software used by Egypt to target activists, the BBC has learned...Gamma International UK denies actually supplying the program, which infects computers with a virus that bugs online voice calls and email...The documents seen by the BBC...describe an offer by Gamma International UK Ltd to supply a software programme called Finfisher...a toolkit "used by many global security and intelligence services" for secretly gaining access to people's computers...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"...[William Hague who speaks for the UK government on computer security issues] said a number of licences had been withdrawn from companies exporting items of concern to Libya, Tunisia and Bahrain - but he conceded software was a difficult product to legislate for. [Also refers to Nokia, Siemens, Nokia Siemens Networks (joint venture Nokia and Siemens].