If you’re in the IT security world, you most definitely have heard enough about the Italian company Hacking Team. Not only you could have heard about Hacking Team’s recent hack-and-leak, but you may have been their victim as well.
Hacking Team is famous as the company that provides intrusion and surveillance software a.k.a. spyware to authorities – governments, intelligence and law enforcement agencies.
According to a post by Motherboard , the company is now pitching their product to the US law enforcement. The reason? Encryption technologies continue to be a big problem for the FBI. We recently wrote an article on the topic. The Bureau is often cornered and the only choice they have is advising ransomware victims to pay the demanded ransom.
Because of the issues brought by these encryption technologies, Hacking Team may just believe it’s the perfect time to advertise their new software. As reported by Motherboard, the company’s CEO David Vincenzetti has written an email and has sent it to a mailing list of their potential and current clients. Part of the email reads as it follows:
“Most [law enforcement agencies] in the US and abroad will become ‘blind,’ they will ‘go dark:’ they will be simply be [sic] unable to fight vicious phenomena such as terrorism,” then adding that “Only the private companies can help here, we are one of them.”
Hacking Team Infamous Hack and Its Consequences
Earlier this year, Hacking Team was hacked by an individual known as Phineas Fisher. As a result of the hack, 400GB+ of the company’s documents and emails, and the source code of its hacking and spying tools, were published online.
The leak revealed troublesome information about Hacking Team’s contacts and customers, many of them questionable. In addition, spicy details about their tools’ capabilities were also made public. The company was forced to shut down its Remote Control System software known as Galileo so that their customers’ spying campaigns remained anonymous.
We’re still waiting on an update about the company’s plans to release the latest version of Galileo software. In the email message sent to the mailing list mentioned above, Hacking Team’s CEO confirmed that they’re now “finalizing brand new and totally unprecedented cyber investigation solutions, game changers, to say the least.”
Milena Dimitrova
An inspired writer and content manager who has been with SensorsTechForum since the project started. A professional with 10+ years of experience in creating engaging content. Focused on user privacy and malware development, she strongly believes in a world where cybersecurity plays a central role. If common sense makes no sense, she will be there to take notes. Those notes may later turn into articles! Follow Milena @Milenyim
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