“The spyware enables a government to access the phone’s emails, text messages, files from applications like Facebook, Viber, Skype, or WhatsApp, contacts, and call history”, reads a Human Rights Watch post describing the use of Hacking Team firmware by the Saudia Arabian government.
Advertisement
Numerous reports from Citizen Lab, a digital rights research group loosely affiliated with the University of Toronto, link Hacking Team software to the repression of minority and dissident groups, as well as journalists, in countries across the Middle East and Africa.
Pozzi’s Twitter account was subsequently hacked.
The files have not been verified by the company or any independent third party as being authentic and there is no indication of how or when the attack took place.
In this Twitter thread, hackers are debating whether the source code of their malware was used to plant child pornography on a victim’s computer. Hacking Team had notable clients worldwide, including in repressive regimes.
Hacking Team has been listed as one of the “corporate enemies of the internet” by Reporters without Borders which slammed the company for selling “products that are liable to be used by governments to violate human rights and freedom of information”.
Documents also reveal FBI, DEA and the Department of Defense both have ties with the Hacking Team.
Several posts contained screenshots that are purportedly of the stolen data, which included emails sent by Hacking Team’s founder and CEO, Vincent Vincenzetti. The company has been accused of supplying such tools to censured countries like Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Russia, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Ethiopia – which it has denied.
A surveillance software selling company is attacked by hackers which resulted in a security breach. “We are working with the police at the moment”.
A company or a government agency using weak passwords and poor security practices is not unheard of, but it’s rare among online security companies.
This report includes material from Reuters.
RSF quotes the company’s mission statement on its website before it was hacked.
Advertisement
“I think Hacking Team is going to have to scramble to maintain the invisibility they claim they sell as a commercial service to their customers”, Anderson said. Hacking Team’s previous and current clients include the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation, Lebanon Army Forces and the Egyptian Ministry of Defense.
