British e-spy agency hack software to access Pakistani internet users

LONDON (Web Desk) – New WikiLeaks documents have revealed the British intelligence agency GCHQ got sanction to “reverse engineer” and hacked into software, website administration tools and hardware to gain access to almost every user in Pakistan before 2008.

The GCHQ had managed to receive warrants, a 2008 memo which described how it could reverse engineer commercial software under a section of British intelligence law, reported Express Tribune.

The law does not explicitly authorise — and had apparently never been used to authorise — a kind of copyright infringement that the GCHQ believed was necessary to infiltrate systems without detection.

The electronic spy agency, according the newly published documents, targeted anti-virus programmes, which could potentially detect GCHQ’s attempts to exploit computer networks (CNE).

GCHQ’s also hacked hardware components such as network routers in order to gain access to networks and or users on such networks.

 

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