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Stage win: FinFisher is bankrupt
- perch56 5y agoGood! Phineas Fisher will be pleased ;)
- uniqueuid 5y agoI guess that's a justified case for Schadenfreude ... But on a more serious note, the battle for transparency and accountability (and ultimately democratic resilience) relies a lot on the hard work by many, many NGOs (many of those listed towards the end of the article, such as the wonderful Citizen Lab from U of Toronto). I find it scary that such important monitorial tasks are left to underfunded volunteers which may go away at any second. Well, the same applies to journalists to a certain degree ... In both cases, we need to care more about sustainable funding of these institutions.
- ComodoHacker 5y agoOn the other hand, we need to strike a balance between "sustainable funding" (be it government or corporate) and true independence.
- sva_ 5y agoIt appears like they're just going through a "rebranding" https://mobile.twitter.com/Pingu/status/1469314222349852675 https://mobile.twitter.com/Pingu/status/1469314222349852675 Quote from the OP article: > the public prosecutor's office wanted to secure the assets potentially obtained from an unlawful act by means of an asset freeze in order to be able to confiscate them if necessary. The group of companies escaped seizure through insolvency So you know what's going on.
- uniqueuid 5y agoIt seems a bit more complicated - there's a great post from netzpolitik [1] (in German, unfortunately) listing all the gory details. Again, all of this came to light because of the hard and persistent work of a whole bunch of NGOs (GFF, netzpolitik, CCC and so on). [1] https://netzpolitik.org/2022/nach-pfaendung-staatstrojaner-hersteller-finfisher-ist-geschlossen-und-bleibt-es-auch/ https://netzpolitik.org/2022/nach-pfaendung-staatstrojaner-h...
- sva_ 5y agoGood source. It sounds a bit like they were destroying the evidence with that move then. Like throwing a match into a gasoline-doused crime scene.
- hacka22 5y agohttps://netzpolitik.org/2022/nach-pfaendung-staatstrojaner-hersteller-finfisher-ist-geschlossen-und-bleibt-es-auch/ https://netzpolitik.org/2022/nach-pfaendung-staatstrojaner-h... (German) reads like it is more than a rebranding. But there are certainly new entrepreneurs who will fill the gap
- actionfromafar 5y agoMeet your new entrepreneurs. Same as your old entrepreneurs.
- OtomotO 5y agoSame shit, new package
- bjarneh 5y ago> companies escaped seizure through insolvency This is a strange arrangement that I guess most countries follow. Companies are legal entities, that can be sued and so on. But a company cannot go to jail (board members or stock owners don't typically go to jail either). These legal entities can also seize to exist (like in this example), and then there is nobody left to be held accountable... It seems like most countries treat companies better than humans.
- nikanj 5y agoMost countries also stop criminal & civil proceedings if the human in question ceases to exist
- vincnetas 5y agoYes, but creating a company does not require 18 years compared to raising adult human. So this can be throw away entities.
- OtomotO 5y agoBut ceasing to exist and dying are similar yet also different concepts. A company can cease to exist on a whim, yet be reborn the next minute under a different name, with the same "genes", the same "information", because the actual living, breathing people behind it, just move on.
- y4mi 5y agoThey don't though? They'd follow through if person a profited from fraud,then died and inherited that money to a third person. With companies it just ends there and then
- bjarneh 5y ago> ceases to exist Exactly, you cannot just change name and buy a mustache like these companies basically can.
- jacquesm 5y agoBig difference between board members and stockholders. Board members are liable to some extent stockholders almost never are, unless the business was specifically founded to facilitate crime. That's where the term Ultimate Beneficiary comes into play.
- GameOfFrowns 5y ago>It appears like they're just going through a "rebranding" IIRC the new company name, Vilic(i)us, describes the position of a "slave overseer" of Roman times. Unfortunately, I cannot find the wikipedia entry for it anymore (possible clean-up job of the new company?). Edit: Found it... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilicus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilicus
- spacemanmatt 5y agowhy do we even tolerate malware companies
- hnbad 5y agoBecause this company was the developer of the "Staatstrojaner" malware government agencies used to hack into computer systems to investigate crimes. I think the original use case was just terrorism but I'm pretty sure it's been used against other crimes as well. As to why the German public tolerate it: because there wasn't sufficient pushback and the government doesn't care about a few protests as most people will eventually forget about it and move on.
- spacemanmatt 5y agoSeems to me like the government should internally own their malware rather than tolerate a company that presumably sells to other governments or private entities. Mine was a rhetorical question of course.
- hutzlibu 5y agoThat would require the state to attract (and compensate) IT talent. As far as I know, they are trying..
- hnbad 5y agoYou mean like a state owned enterprise? That would go against decades of free market ideology. Even if we had somehow ended up with a state owned malware development organization it would probably have been privatized by now.
- robertlagrant 5y agoAre you joking? Many states do this. E.g. in the UK they had a massive hiring binge for cyber a few years ago. They will also buy from third parties. That's not ideology (the free market can't really be deemed an ideology), that's just not succumbing to an (actual) ideology that says the state must own everything.
- oaiey 5y agoThat the CCC thanks Microsoft ... hell is freezing in multiple places ;)
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- bharath4321 5y ago
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- tom899 5y agoThey will continue under a new name and description. The success to this day is not remarkable. That software has not stopped criminals like Olaf Scholz and his buddies, nor has it protect a mayor of a city that was killed in his own house. So, its useless and unethical to think to automate prosecution. Too many false-positives and a bad success rate is not and can not be the goal to break basic rights. The real criminals are not the weed dealers next door and not the dumb neo-fascists, they gather everyday in the parlaments with their shady double income, their wrongdoings and promises broken every day. For what that software has brough revenue, the victims of the flood this summer, would enjoy golden handrails and faucets in their newly built homes.
- ChuckNorris89 5y ago>they gather everyday in the parlaments with their shady double income, their wrongdoings and promises broken every day You can add Ursula v.d.L. to that list. I lost faith in all EU governments to do anything for the people.
- OtomotO 5y agoUltimate power corrupts ultimately... okay, there are always exceptions to that rule, like e.g. Emperor Marcus Aurelius
- ChuckNorris89 5y agoAnyone remember when democracy actually meant that the representatives of the people were chosen among the ordinary people themselves? While now we elect members of the elite to act as our representatives and we're shocked when we find out they actually represent the elite, instead of us, and are entangled in very complex and shady forms of corruption, bribery, tax evasion, insider trading and cronyism? Who could have expected that? /s It's like sheep electing flock leaders among a pack of wolves. When will we stop doing that?
- juanani 5y ago
- spupe 5y agoI didn't know about this company before, but a cursory search suggests they were only based in Germany, not used by the German government. Title is misleading, especially as it is not the original title of the article, and Germany has in fact prosecuted them. That said, good riddance. We desperately need accountability for malware coming from state actors.
- coriny 5y agoYou might have missed this statement in the article: > German authorities were of course also customers of the company Though I don't think that's what the title was implying, I think it means German "nationality" rather than German "state-owned".
- spupe 5y agoYou are right about this claim, but the only thing I could find to substantiate it is a 2013 article in which leaked documents suggests German federal police wanted to use it [1]. It is still incorrect to suggest this is a German state spyware, although of course you are right about the ambiguity here. [1] https://netzpolitik.org/2013/secret-government-document-reveals-german-federal-police-plans-to-use-gamma-finfisher-spyware/ https://netzpolitik.org/2013/secret-government-document-reve...
- nbadg 5y agoI will be interested to see how this interacts with the Ampel Koalition's desire to add more restrictions on state-sponsored hacking (search term, "Staatstrojaner" [1]). The current government coalition contract includes "increasing controls" and "higher thresholds" for their use (my translation), which would signal a shift in German federal policy _at least slightly_ away from state-sponsored hacking, which was very favored by the previous government. It's probably also worth mentioning that these Staatstrojaner haven't really demonstrated effectiveness. It's an extremely common refrain on the Netzpolitik scene here that we would all be much, much better served if the government were compelled to responsibly disclose the bugs used in these tools to the companies producing the software, instead of trying to keep them quiet in order to weaponize them. But I suspect this argument is basically preaching to the choir at HN. For German speakers, I would highly recommend following both Netzpolitik and Lage der Nation; the former is self-explanatory but the latter also frequently talks about digital policy in Germany. Edit: a clarifying point here, as far as I understand, FinFisher is *not* a state-owned company (that would be big news!), but rather a normal GmbH (like an LLC) that develops and sells Staatstrojaner. As such I think the line in the title ("German State Malware Company") strikes me as inaccurate in both English and a hypothetical German->English translation. [1] https://netzpolitik.org/2021/koalitionsvertrag-das-plant-die-ampel-in-der-netzpolitik/ https://netzpolitik.org/2021/koalitionsvertrag-das-plant-die... ---- Side note, I know metacommentary isn't typically considered entirely kosher on HN, but some threads I'm seeing pretty high up in the discussion here are really not meeting the quality standards I would expect from HN. Calling the current German chancellor Scholz a "criminal" with "buddies", and a follow-up thread that can be summed up as "I think the EU is so corrupt that it only looks after its own politicians" -- all of this with absolutely no evidence -- is so frustratingly hyperbolic and reductionist that it has me (in all seriousness) wondering what level of exposure HN has to state-level disinformation actors.
- bharath4321 5y ago
- bharath4321 5y ago
- ThePhysicist 5y agoProbably a simple "flip". Companies in Germany do that often when they want to move overseas. The reason is that the Finanzamt (IRS) will tax any assets you move abroad. That can be a large problem for companies that e.g. get US funding. I know of a case where a financially successful German startup got funded by YC and needed to reincorporate in the US. If they had done it via the official route the Finanzamt would have used the YC valuation as a basis for calculating the taxes and the company would've needed to pay a seven-figure amount. They circumvented this by bankrupting the company and buying out the assets instead, which was then tax-free. I strongly suspect this is a similar move by FinFisher.
- bombcar 5y agoExactly. People assume bankruptcy of a company is like a human dying but it’s not at all - the exact company and people involved can continue to exist through a bankruptcy just with new owners.
- mhh__ 5y agoBut corporations are people?
- zwirbl 5y agoThe may be a "legal person" depending on the circumstances
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago> But corporations are people? People don't die when they go bankrupt.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]