A man types on a computer keyboard in Warsaw in this February 28, 2013 illustration. (Photo : Reuters)
Italian IT company Hacking Team, famous for selling surveillance tools to law enforcement agencies and various government, recently claim that they themselves was a victim of a hacking spree.
According to The Telegraph, around 400GB of sensitive data was stolen for the server of Hacking Team and was uploaded to peer-to-peer file sharing protocol BitTorrent. Stolen data includes email communication, client lists, source codes and internal documents.
Majority of the tech community was stunned after the leak shows that among Hacking Team's client was some of the world's most repressive regime. Hacking Team's previous and current clients include the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation, Lebanon Army Forces and the Egyptian Ministry of Defense. It also shows that in 2014 the company was working with Russia's Intelligence Kvant Research and Sudan's National Intelligence Security Service.
According to Tech Crunch, Hacking Team has previously denied the allegation that the company is selling surveillance technology to "any repressive regime."
Aside from leaking classified information, the hackers also defaced Hacking Team's official Twitter account and changed its official name to Hacked Team as well as posting a new logo and biography for the company. The hackers also posted direct download links for the stolen data.
Hacking Team system and security engineer Christian Pozzi released a statement saying, "We haven't broken any laws. We simply provide custom software solutions tailored to our customer needs. Don't believe all the false info the attackers are spreading."
As of this writing, no one claims responsibility for the Hacking Team attack and massive data dump.
