When Hackers Get Hacked: Firm That Sold Spyware to Governments Compromised Devin Kate Pope - TechSpot
go to original July 7, 2015

In case you're wondering how this group managed to get their clients and promoted its spyware products, here's an ad for surveillance software 'Da Vinci' made by Hacking Team. (viewsdesk's channel)

On Sunday afternoon when most of Twitter was distracted by the Women's World Cup, a company known (and sometimes reviled) for helping governments and intelligence agencies spy on their citizens was hacked.

Hacking Team, the target, is an Italian company that was most recently in the public eye when it was placed on the Enemies of the Internet index. The first public signal of the hack was an unusual tweet by Hacking Team and around the same time the username and header photo were changed to "Hacked Team."

The unknown hackers published a torrent file with 400GB of internal documents, source code and emails for anyone who wanted to look. One of the documents showed poor password choices by Hacking Team (HTPassw0rd, Passw0rd!81, Passw0rd, Passw0rd!, Pas$w0rd, Rite1.!!) that, considering the security aspect of the company, are laughable.

Another more newsworthy discovery was that Hacking Team has indeed done business with Sudan, something the company had previously denied. There's a UN arms embargo on Sudan, covered by EU and UK law, so the publication of this information could spell (more) trouble for the company.

Read the rest at TechSpot

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