Gamma Group is an Anglo-German technology company that sells surveillance software to governments and police forces around the world.
The company has been strongly criticised by human rights organisations for selling its FinFisher software to undemocratic regimes such as Egypt and Bahrain.
The emails were passed to analysts who identified malware which would give FinFisher access to the infected computers.
[1] The University of Toronto's CitizenLab conducted an investigation of Gamma which identified "33 likely government users of FinFisher in 32 countries, based on the presence of a FinFisher master at an IP address in a country or belonging to a specific government department.
[4] Despite this hack and the extent of negative publicity about Gamma's activities, FinFisher was reported to be gaining in popularity around the world with numerous governments.