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Hacking Team Scrambling To Limit Damage Brought On By Explosive Data Leak

Posted by timothy on from the sounds-dangerous dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Who hacked Hacking Team, the Milan-based company selling intrusion and surveillance software to governments, law enforcement agencies and (as it turns out) companies? A hacker who goes by "Phineas Fisher" claims it was him (her? them?). In the meantime, Hacking Team is scrambling to minimize the damage this hack and data leak is doing to the company. They sent out emails to all its customers, requesting them to shut down all deployments of its Remote Control System software ("Galileo") — even though it seems they could do that themselves, as the customer software apparently has secret backdoors. Perhaps they chose the first route because they hoped to keep that fact hidden from the customers? And because every copy of Hacking Team's Galileo software is secretly watermarked, the leaked information could allow researchers to link a certain backdoor to a specific customer.

5 of 95 comments (clear)

  1. Plus some GPL code by ssam · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Also some GPL derived drivers that they have been distributing to their customers. https://twitter.com/mjg59/stat...

  2. Holy crap ... by gstoddart · · Score: 3, Interesting

    even though it seems they could do that themselves, as the customer software apparently has secret backdoors

    So basically even security researchers are morons who put in secret back doors?

    Bloody idiots.

    This is really simple: companies need to have very strict liability for doing stupid stuff like this. Putting secret backdoors should be treated the same as hacking into it ... especially if someone else exploits that.

    --
    Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    1. Re:Holy crap ... by s.petry · · Score: 3, Interesting

      And who exactly would have prosecuted them? The Governments paying them to build software so that the Governments could hack people? Without the source leak, how would anyone have known except by the end consumer providing network dumps? Call me a skeptic, but I doubt the people buying this were installing it locally for forensic reasons.

      --

      -The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.

  3. The enemy of my enemy != my friend by jimbolauski · · Score: 4, Interesting

    While I am happy that Hacking Team got their comeuppance I am not ready to support their new found nemesis. This could be nothing more then a turf war and the last thing I want is another set of more cunning bad guys getting their seed money from me.

    --
    Knowledge = Power
    P= W/t
    t=Money
    Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
  4. Re:The fickle finger of fate..... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Y'know it's funny... This particular leak has spurred the economy. I went out yesterday and bought a 3TB drive specifically to have extra space to download and extract and peruse the 400 GB of Hacker Team evilware. Current ETA gives me 11 more hours before I'm done but I think it's worth it just to poke around.