Security News > 2023 > July > Liberté, Égalité, Spyware: France okays cops snooping on phones

Per Le Monde, lawmakers from French president Emmanuel Macron's Renaissance party added several amendments to what's been dubbed the "Snoopers' charter" - requiring remote spying only be used "When justified by the nature and seriousness of the crime," and even then only for a "Strict and proportional" length of time.

French justice minister Éric Dupond-Moretti said the bill will only apply to a few dozen cases per year and, rather than being a way for France to get government-sponsored spyware onto the devices of anyone accused of a crime, will save lives.

"A cyber security incident has impacted a third-party software from Progress called MOVEit Transfer, which was running on a Shell IT platform," Shell explained in a brief statement about the breach.

Cl0p last hit Shell two years ago in a similar manner - that time involving file transfer software made by Accellion, which has since rebranded as Kiteworks.

To make matters worse, Shell's report of the breach comes just a day before Progress, maker of MOVEit, released a service pack to address three additional serious vulnerabilities in its code.

Progress said the MOVEit service packs will be a regularly-released security measure to combat exploitation of its software, so anyone yet to flee to another service provider should get patching, lest you end up like Shell.

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/07/10/in_brief_security/