Italian surveillance company apparently hacked

Hacking Team specializes in “offensive technology” and digital intrusion software to address digital security needs, according to their website. The company also doesn’t have access to its email system as of Monday afternoon, a source said.

Some of the leaked documents appear to show passwords used by both Hacking Team staff and its customers.

Hacking Team’s services mainly consist of a variety of software that many governments around the world use in their surveillance programs.

An engineer at the company, Christian Pozzi (whose Twitter account has been removed), tried to reduce the exposure by tweeting that the 400GB torrent file contains a virus and that the attackers just try to spread lies about Hacking Team.

Hacking Team hasn’t responded to a request for comment about the breach.

The Italian company, which sells surveillance tools to government and law enforcement agencies, was hacked over the weekend. The revelations about Hacking Team may bring new urgency to the discussion and raise questions about USA reliance on companies like that, said Christopher Soghoian, a technologist with the American Civil Liberties Union and a critic of the commercial surveillance industry. We have heard of them especially previous year, after a secret document was released talking about the company’s various tools used to get around encryption and spy on people, in general.

Some of the leaked passwords of the hacking team reveal the firm itself was not very smart when it came to its own security. Hackers, presumably of the same team, also compromised the Hacking Team’s Twitter page, changing the profile picture and biography and tweeting images of some of the stolen data. He further added that Hacking Team was working with police on the issue. “We are investigating to determine the extent of this attack and specifically what has been taken”.

However, Reporters Without Borders lists the firm as “an enemy of the internet”, mainly owing to products such as the DaVinci remote control software.

There is no doubt that the list of Hacking Team’s clients is controversial, but first it has to be proven that is a legitimate one, something that we can’t say for sure right now. As proof, the hacktivists posted invoices purporting to show malware sales to groups in Egypt, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan. His Twitter account was soon hacked before it was deleted completely.

“A lot of what the attackers are claiming regarding our company is not true”.