Meet the Hackers Who Get Rich Selling Spies Zero-Day Exploits

Sparrowvsrevolution writes "Forbes profiles Vupen, a French security firm that openly sells secret software exploits to spies and government agencies. Its customers pay a $100,000 annual fee simply for the privilege of paying extra fees for the exploits that Vupen's hackers develop, which the company says can penetrate every major browser, as well as other targets like iOS, Android, Adobe Reader and Microsoft Word. Those individual fees often cost much more than that six-figure subscription, and Vupen sells them non-exclusively to play its customers off each other in an espionage arms race. The company's CEO, Chaouki Bekrar, says Vupen only sells to NATO governments and 'NATO partners' but he admits 'if you sell weapons to someone, there's no way to ensure that they won't sell to another agency.'"

Comments

Re:Kind of shady?

[peragrin]

As a Soldier your not smart enough to know that not every country obeys the same laws or has the same military traditions. The USA is noted for giving it's military field commanders more power to change orders in order to achieve the objective.