A report released by the Citizen Lab has indicated the Ethiopian government is using spyware to monitor political activists and opposition groups in the country.
Citizen Lab, based at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto, said in the report the Ethiopian government was using spyware called FinSpy to watch activists, and has since used the technology to impede Ginbot 7, an opposition movement.
Morgan Marquis-Boire, a security researcher and technical advisor at the Munk School, said: “The existence of a FinSpy sample that contains Ethiopia-specific imagery and that communicates with a still-active command and control server in Ethiopia strongly suggests that the Ethiopian government is using FinSpy.”
The spyware works by tricking the users to download an image file of Ginbot 7 which is embedded in FinSpy, thereby initiating the spying.
Citizen Lab said in its findings the Internet Protocol (IP) address associated in tracking the opposition movements in the country belonged to Ethio Telecom, a state-owned telecom company.
The report indicates Ethiopia is just one of the 25 countries including America where law
enforcers use spyware to carry out surveillance on criminals.
FinSpy was developed in Germany, and distributed by Gamma Group’s subsidiary, based in the UK. The report also states the software has been regularly sold to countries where dissenting political activity and free speech is criminalised.
