Finfisher malware authors fire off legal threats to silence German journos

guest · Oct 10, 2019

Finfisher malware authors fire off legal threats to silence German journos
October 10, 2019
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/10/10/finfisher_authors_legal_threats_german_journalists/

Malware authors behind the Finfisher spyware suite, well beloved by dictators, have sent legal threats intended to silence a German news blog that reported them to criminal prosecutors over allegedly illegal malware exports.

"Our reporting on the criminal complaint [we filed] against the producers of the state trojan-horse spyware software FinFisher has resulted in mail from the law firm Schertz-Bergmann. We were urged to sign a cease-and-desist declaration," said the site's Markus Beckedahl in a recent post.
He told El Reg that Finfisher's authors allege that Netzpolitik broke German media laws by not asking them to comment on the allegations against them. Beckedahl said that for years he and his colleagues had been asking Finfisher for comment, without reply, including for the disputed articles.

Along with Reporters Without Borders and a couple of NGOs, Netzpolitik campaigners filed the criminal complaint (available in German PDF here) against Finfisher's authors, the Gamma Group. This followed the discovery, so it is claimed by their supporters (PDF), of Finfisher's surveillance malware on the devices of Turkish opposition politicians.
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The German campaigning blog is not alone in its reporting: various national news media including broadcaster Deutsche Welle also covered the allegations. German export law prohibits malware from being shipped directly to Turkey, according to DW.
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