Hacking Team is an Italian company that develops the legal-ish spyware called the RCS (remote control systems) and supposedly sells it to governments as a surveillance devices. Bruce Schneier, security legend, says, “Hacking Team is a pretty sleazy company, selling surveillance software to all sorts of authoritarian governments around the world.”
Someone hacked the cyberweapons arms manufacturer Hacking Team and posted 400 GB of internal company data!!!!1, including a spreadsheet listing every government client, when they first bought the surveillance software, and how much money they have paid the company to date. Not surprising, the company has been lying about who its customers are.
Some of the data showed spreadsheets of the security professionals stored passwords for their clients, including the password pa$$w0rd… Many commenters have gone through some of the data leaked and have found laughable passwords for this company being security consultants. Hacking team has sold their product to many Governments. The tools could give governments access to emails, text messages, call history and address books, as well as logging keystrokes and obtaining search history data.
From this point onwards, the tool can track a user’s location via the phone’s GPS signal, take screenshots, record audio from the phones to monitor calls or conversations, or hijack the phone’s camera to take pictures.
The source code for the RCS is now available on mirror sites. Expect an increase in spying on phones.
