Thanks to some 400 gigabytes of leaked documents released by hackers on Sunday night, we now know that the Australian Federal Police, ASIO and the Victorian corruption watchdog IBAC were among many government agencies from around the world to use the services of notorious Italian surveillance company Hacking Team.
Advertisement
The company’s claim, however, is worth questioning as it isn’t clear why someone would attempt to use software that’s been under extremely close scrutiny in recent days.
Meanwhile Hacking Team spokesman Eric Rabe says the firm has lost none of its clients.
Whistleblower Wikileaks has published over one million emails from the cache of stolen Hacking Team data making it easily searchable.
Wikileaks also shows that within the email archive are 2,734 emails related to the Saudi Arabian government, with many activists pointing out the poor record that government has when it comes to human rights. That vulnerability, in Adobe Systems’ Flash player, has been patched.
The emails reveal that the Federal Bureau of Investigation dropped big money on Hacking Team’s powerful snooping software, paying over $800,000 on updates and maintenance even though Hacking Team’s software was considered a backup to the FBI’s other digital tools.
The culprits of the Hacking Team breach are still at large, but clues point to the involvement of Anonymous.
Advertisement
Engineers are updating RCS to allow clients to resume criminal and intelligence investigations. Nearly all of the company’s clients have suspended use of RCS now, he wrote.
