The spectacular hacking of a surveillance society … – Le Figaro

Hacking Team, an Italian company specialized in the monitoring of Internet users, has been targeted. Confidential files have been exposed.

Reporters Without Borders NGO actually one of the most prominent members of its list of “Enemies Internet “. Hacking Team, an Italian company that provides monitoring tools to governments, was a victim of a computer attack. Confidential files were derrobés and his Twitter account was hijacked. “Since we have nothing to hide, we publish our emails, our files and source code (of our software, ed),” it is said in one of these messages. Two links allow you to download 400 GB archives on the company.

Hacking Team is developing a monitoring tool called Remote Control System (RCS, also called DaVinci, or Galileo). It is spyware that can intercept communications on the Internet browsing of citizens, on their exchanges of documents and their sending SMS. It captures Skype communications, numerical data, geolocation history and the audio or video picked up by the microphone and the computer webcam. It can be installed secretly “in a whole country (…) to target thousands of people,” says a promotional video posted on YouTube in 2013.

RCS is, somehow, to staff States that do not have the means of the NSA, surveillance and intrusion capabilities to spy on their citizens. Last year, a survey published by researchers at the Citizen Lab in the University of Toronto, have stated that the Hacking Team Spyware could be used by countries that respect authorities does by rights Male to monitor opponents or journalists. When asked by the United Nations, Hacking Team had said he would not entrenait relations with “countries on blacklists by the United States and international organizations including the European Union and NATO”

A contract with Sudan

The files posted on the night conceal what appears as a list of Hacking Team in client countries. Figure and a contract for $ 2.85 million with Chile, but also another $ 1 million spent with Ethiopia or a third of 480,000 euros with Sudan. However, Hacking Team had specifically denied any commercial relationship reminds Christopher Soghoian, a leader of the American Civil Liberties Union, one of the freedoms NGOs.

The first available archive contains a selection of numerous passwords used by Hacking Team and its customers. It also shows the RCS documentation on elements such as the interface element, which provides a summary of information about a suspect:

Another message indicates that the publication of the Citizen Lab report had Hacking Team implications. One of its suppliers has cut off access to his site “because of the negative media buzz,” wrote one investor. “We must solve this problem.”

“Most things are false”

The place of the attack and its precise reasons are not yet known. Several spectacular attacks of this kind have occurred in recent months, including piracy and Sony Pictures data theft. An engineer Hacking Team announced on Twitter work closely with the police and said that those responsible would be “arrested”, but said he could not comment on the security breach. “Most of the attackers say that our society is wrong. Stop spreading lies about the services we offer, “he completed. Before his account himself away.