Saudi Government Targeting Dissidents With Mobile Malware 41
wiredmikey (1824622) writes Human Rights Watch on Friday demanded a clarification from Saudi Arabia over allegations from security researchers that the kingdom is infecting and monitoring dissidents' mobile phones with surveillance malware. The New York-based rights watchdog said surveillance software allegedly made by Italian firm Hacking Team mostly targeted individuals in Qatif district in Eastern Province, which has been the site of sporadic Shiite-led protests since February 2011. "We have documented how Saudi authorities routinely crack down on online activists who have embraced social media to call out human rights abuses," said Cynthia Wong, HRW's senior Internet researcher. "It seems that authorities may now be hacking into mobile phones, turning digital tools into just another way for the government to intimidate and silence independent voices." The accusations against the Saudi Government come days after researchers from Kaspersky Lab and Citizen Lab uncovered new details on advanced surveillance tools offered by HackingTeam [Note: mentioned in this earlier Slashdot story], including never before seen implants for smartphones running on iOS and Android.
detection (Score:4, Informative)
Hello,
The SHA-256 hash for the file is 8e64c38789c1bae752e7b4d0d58078399feb7cd3339712590cf727dfd90d254d.
According to VirusTotal, at the time the report was released, it was being detected by by the following anti-malware programs:
Five out of fifty-three program, or a little under 10%. Currently, detection is at 13/53, according to this [virustotal.com] report.
Regards,
Aryeh Goretsky