The Hackers Just got HACKED!!!!

Yup you heard that right (or read it), the people who are responsible for hacking you and many of our fellow human beings living on the planet earth just got hacked themselves or atleast a particular group of them. The Hacking Team an organization that has provided surveillance services to police departments and many other similar authorities just had a major leak, when I say major I mean 400GB worth of internal data, tools and communications. While the rest of the world was watching the final of the FIFA Women`s World Cup, The Hacking Team`s official Twitter account got overtaken by an as of yet unknown entity (sources say another hacker(s)) and what they tweeted was quite sarcastic as seen in the below image.

They posted a link to a torrent file that contained some of the most sensitive data of the organization, among which was a list of clients, that were active or inactive. The list showed that  the Milan-based firm sold to everyone from Saudi Arabia to South Korea to the US DEA and FBI. Two particularly controversial buyers (for differing reasons) are Russia and Sudan, both of which are tagged with the cryptic “Not officially supported” category, rather than Active, Expired, or Inactive as with all others. You can find the entire raw data list here.

One of the things leaked is pretty serious, an invoice for $1 million to Ethiopia’s Information Network Security Agency. Now this is exactly the type of thing that journalist and whistle-blowers in countries like Sudan who work hard to expose the human rights violations have to keep a lookout for.

Now the organization provides these tools to everyone, anyone can get their services from them for their own potentially evil plans, so in case you are planning on world domination ring em up. When anyone can get these privacy invasion tools and services for them imagine how secure you are on the internet. The company’s Christian Pozzi has been vocal in claiming that the company has done nothing illegal — a claim that may be slightly beyond the current status of international law. Sudan, in particular, is heavily embargoed with respect to weapons, meaning that one crucial issue is whether Hacking Team’s invasive software counts as a weapon. With the term “cyber warfare” and “cyber weapon” now in common usage, it’s difficult to imagine how the sale of anonymity-breaking software to Russia wouldn’t cross the line into aiding military efforts. See where this is getting nobody wants WWIII just yet.

What is really intriguing is that the company released a statement saying that the torrent file contains a harmful virus. An aptly appropriate response came from former Twitter security engineer John Adams.

Now that’s how you kick**se.

Though it’s worth noting that, through their sale of software to the FBI and other organizations, Hacking Team’s software may very well have been used to attack child pornography rings.