Hacking Team, an Italian IT company that sells surveillance tools to governments and law enforcement agencies, was hacked itself last night.
In the past, the Milan-based company, which describes itself as a maker of lawful interception software used by police and intelligence services worldwide, had been accused by anti-surveillance campaigners of selling snooping tools to governments with poor human rights records.
Around 400GB of data has allegedly been uploaded to BitTorrent, including internal documents, emal communications and client lists that indicate that the company did indeed sell software to repressive regimes, according to CSO Online.
The service maintenance list shared by Twitter user @SynAckPwn reveals that contracts with Sudan's National Intelligence Security Service and Russia's Intelligence Kvant Research are in place, but "not officially supported".
The link to Sudan is particularly interesting because the company had previously stated that it has never done business with the nation. There is a UN arms embargo on the Sudan, which is covered by EU and UK law. If it was doing business with the Sudanese government, then Hacking Team has far more at risk than just their reputation.
The hackers also defaced the company's Twitter account last night, changing its name to "Hacked Team" and posting links to where the stolen files were being hosted. The posts, however, have already been deleted.
Hacking Team system and security engineer Christian Pozzi took to Twitter to refute the claims, after a list of his passwords was published along with the other data. A cached version of his tweets can be found on archive.is.
Hacking Team did not respond to emails or calls seeking to confirm the authenticity of the documents. In a previous statement in March, the company said it could not disclose its clients "since to do so could jeopardize ongoing law enforcement investigations",according to Reuters.
As of now, the hackers still remain unidentified.
