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.

Comments

The fickle finger of fate.....

[Proudrooster]

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.

Re: The fickle finger of fate.....

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll drink to that! Wait...

Couldn't have happened to a nicer group of people

[FreeUser]

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.

Plus some GPL code

[ssam]

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

What Were They Hoping For?

[GTRacer]

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...