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EDITOR IN CHIEF- ABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

Facing dissent from abroad, Ethiopia turns to spyware

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Chris Stein -


As soon as Ethiopian opposition activist Henok Gabisa read the e-mail, he knew something was not right.


With the subject line ‘Democracy in Ethiopia: Can it be saved?’, the message seemed tailor-made for him.


Yet, the US-based academic, who teaches law at Washington and Lee University, said it was written vaguely and contained a suspicious hyperlink.


Indeed, the e-mail was an attempt to infect his computer with spyware that secretly gathers information and similar to hundreds sent to Ethiopian dissidents worldwide that were probably ordered by the country’s government, according to a report published last week by the cyber security research group Citizen Lab.


Ethiopia’s government has been increasingly on the defensive since the country’s two largest ethnic groups, the Oromos and Amharas, began protesting in 2015.


Hundreds died in the violence and tens of thousands were rounded up in sweeping arrests, among them opposition political activists and journalists.


But many of Ethiopia’s fiercest critics are outside the country, and thus beyond the immediate reach of its security apparatus, particularly among its diaspora population in the USA.


To counter that, Ethiopia is said to have ramped up the use of computer spyware, including stalking dissidents on US soil.


“There’s been no other case I can think of where we’ve had such an endless string of attempts,” said Bill Marczak, a senior research fellow with the Canada-based Citizen Lab, of the spyware campaign.


US-based broadcasters Ethiopian Satellite Television (ESAT) and Oromia Media Network (OMN) make little secret of their opposition to Ethiopia’s government.


The enmity is mutual, with Ethiopia banning both channels during a 10-month state of emergency declared in October 2016, and filing terrorism charges against OMN’s Executive Director Jawar Mohammed earlier this year. Henok believes his work with OMN is why he received two e-mails last March that offered a phony software update that the report said was actually a spyware designed by an Israeli defence contractor. Henok later learned the e-mail was malicious after allowing Citizen Lab to scan his e-mails.


Citizen Lab found evidence linking the spyware to a command server in Ethiopia showing 43 electronic devices had been successfully infected, several of which they linked to Eritrea, Ethiopia’s one-time territory that is now a bitter enemy.


Ethiopia’s government did not respond to requests for comment.


Human Rights Watch has accused Ethiopia of using evidence from spyware intercepts against dissidents within the country. — AFP


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