Posted by Martijn Grooten on Oct 22, 2018
In recent years, we have seen a trend of commercial spyware being sold to governments. This is a very controversial subject, not least because of the frequent use of this spyware against opposition targets. However, there is general agreement that the malware tends in most cases to be well written.
There are exceptions though. At VB2018 in Montreal, CSIS researchers Benoît Ancel and Aleksejs Kuprins presented their research into a spyware seller that a fellow operator in this space described as a "criminal of the worst kind".
Whether this applies to the ethics of the company in question is something one should decide for oneself; the VB2018 presentation, however, suggests that it may be a very accurate description of the service that the company offers.
We have uploaded the video of Benoît and Aleksejs's talk to our YouTube channel. Their presentation slides are also available here (PDF).
