Singapore’s government has been identified among a list of 25 countries that were found by two researchers to be employing spy software, in a report published by a Canadian think-tank.
The report, published on Citizen Lab, the University of Toronto’s centre for research on digital media and global security, detailed findings from two security researchers at the universities of California and Toronto that named the city-state among others that have servers running a specific spyware.
“FinSpy”, the term used for the spyware the researchers found, is sold by a British company called Gamma Group. Embedded in emails, the software has the capability to “grab images off computer screens, record Skype chats, turn on cameras and microphones and log keystrokes”, according to a New York Times report on the findings. Once downloaded unknowingly, FinSpy links a user’s computer to a local server — in some of these cases, servers that belonged to their governments. Full story
