VB2018 presentation: The wolf in sheep’s clothing – undressed

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).