Hacking Team

Hacking Team is an organization that was established in 2003. The company is focused on offensive security. The company provided a solution for cyber-crimes in 2004. The institution is made up of the Milan team consisting of more than 50 personnel dedicated to ensuring cyber safety. The spyware and surveillance company sells its services to governments all over the world.

In July 2015, the monitoring and Spyware Company became a victim of a hacking incident. The Italian based firm was attacked by hackers who ended up revealing some of the most interesting data from the Hacking Team Company. The hackers compromised the company’s Twitter account from where they leaked data belonging to the enterprise. The unknown hackers sent a series of tweets revealing embarrassing internal emails and torrent consisting of internal files, source codes, and other communications. One of the tweets showed an email from the Hacking Team CEO David Vincenzetti, which was mocking a competitor for being severely hacked. Embarrassing emails belonging to the Hacking Team together with other internal files and other communications were exposed by the attackers. The size of the data leaked was said to be 415GB in total.

The Company is based in Milan, and it serves many governments belonging to different countries such as the United States, Morocco, South Korea, Ethiopia, and the United Arab State. Drug Enforcement Agency is also assisted by this company, and the firm provides tools that are used for spying on suspects, tapping into their mobile devices, passwords, and emails among others. The Hacking Team Company is the founder of the Ettercap, and this is a spying tool mostly used by hackers.

The hackers revealed the files belonging to the company leading to the dismantling of the company’s reputation. The hacker’s action was move was driven by the fact that the Hacking Team is involved in dealings with different kinds of governments. The hackers revealed some of the company’s weaknesses that were never thought to exist. The type of security the company uses is low-level, and the code was poorly written. The hack showed that the corporation was not put together the way many people thought.

The hackers claim that the staff of the Hacking Team was asleep when they were stealing the company’s file prompting them to use the hashtag #IsHackingTeamAwakeYet. The company’s security engineer Christian Pozzi later announced that the dumped data had viruses and threatened the user with a jail term. The Hacking Team Company latter was forced to send emails to their clients advising them to stop using the software.

The individual behind the hacking incident was not named. However, a hacker going by the name Phineas Fisher claimed responsibility of the hacking activity. Phineas Fisher is reported to be the same person who hacked a company called Gamma International in 2014.

The information that was stolen from the Hacking Team Company was later released on GitHub repository called “Hacked Team.” WikiLeaks also released all emails included in the 415GB files that were stolen. Some of the documents claimed that the Hacking Team Company sold their information and services to both the FBI and the Russian government.

References:
http://www.theverge.com/2015/7/6/8899861/hacking-team-hacked-security-leaked
http://www.techtimes.com/articles/68204/20150711/hacking-team-hacked-400gb-data-dump-state-surveillance-exposes-dirty-htm