Slashdot Mirror
Hacking Team Scrambling To Limit Damage Brought On By Explosive Data Leak
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.
That doesn't say anything of the gender of the person using that nom de plume.
Boys and girls there is a lesson in this story. Each of us has a karma bucket. When that karma bucket is depleted the "fickle finger of fate" may reach and touch us causing untold calamity. Hacking Team's karma bucket has a giant hole in the bottom and can never be refilled. All of their tricks and source code have been laid bare, and are now in full view of the Internet.
If someone has a link the to torrent, please post it.
Ah, schadenfreude. Seeing these jerks die by the sword they have wielded against the rest of us is just too satisfying.
I particularly like how it's come out that they were backdooring (and presumably screwing, or at least reserving the opportunity to screw) their own ethically-challenged customer base.
Really, it's not nice to take such delight in the downfall of others, but it just feels so damn good.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Also some GPL derived drivers that they have been distributing to their customers. https://twitter.com/mjg59/stat...
This is a lesson... software with backdoors, the backdoors eventually get found out. This is a real proof against the anti-encryption lobby, that if encryption is gutted, then only the bad guys will have actual security.
Even if it something that requires a private key to access, the private key can be hacked or physically stolen if stashed on a HSM.
Who needs a name? Statistical probability indicates that person is almost certainly a male.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
I'm curious what Hacking Team thought was worth the risk of watermarking their products to customer installations and having these alleged backdoors to backdoors. Seems like a lot of risk for no payoff unless they hoped one day to "flip the script" and hack their customer base...
Defending IP by destroying access to it? That makes sense, RIAA/MPAA. Go to the corner until you can play nice!
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.
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
Yet, according to ]Hacking Team[ Six Confidential Whitepapers on cryptome.org, HT explicitly state on page 31
So, if HT lie to their rather high powered customers about a major detail like that, what else?
show everyone how undermining the security measures of the global tech. economy and culture is tantamount to shooting yourself in the foot.
Are you kidding? The powers that be will spin this as proving their point:
If it weren't for all this evil encryption they would have no problem catching the villainous hackers that perpetrated these crimes against humanity by these supporters of terrorism and child pornography for the children. It's only because of un-backdoored evil encryption that the angelic powers of all good failed to stop these terroristic endeavours which exposed this good company that has help the FBI foil 1 million terrorist plots by providing means of accessing evilly encrypted systems.
Who is John Galt?