Ecuador: NGO warns journalists, activists of attacks via spyware

panampost.com/Belén Marty reported Ecuadorian free-speech NGO Fundamedios reports that Ecuadorian journalists and activists have likely been attacked with the same spyware used to target the late Argentinean prosecutor Alberto Nisman and Argentinean journalist Jorge Lanata.

On August 25, the NGO released a statement based on data collected for an article published on August 21 in the Intercept, a civil-libertarian publication. The report reveals that both Nisman and Lanata had received a file attachment named “estrictamente secreto y confidencial.pdf.jar” (strictly secret and confidential).

While the file was masked as a PDF, it was actually “an off-the-shelf commercial digital spying tool or remote access toolkit (RAT) known as AlienSpy,” First Look Media Director of Security Morgan Marquis-Boire explains in the article. According to Fidelis, an online-security provider, AlienSpy can be easily purchased on the web for between US$19.90 and $219. Read Article