Hacking Team Breach Could Be a Good Thing, Ex-Employee Says

A major security breach may be beneficial to Hacking Team, said an ex-employee of the company, an Italian software provider used by governments to fight crime. Cybercriminals hacked into the company's system and posted its proprietary software on the Internet July 6, Hacking Team said in a statement last week. Monday, the former Hacking Team employee, Claudio Agosti, a self-described privacy activist, posted on Medium saying that the information exposed during the breach is more beneficial to the public than harmful to the company. Agosti, who now works at TacticalTech and co-founded the digital whistleblowing platform GlobaLeaks, said he wanted the public to focus on the most important fact gleaned from the breach: which digital weapons are being used and how they are being used. “Citizens, now aware, can pressure for proper regulation,” Agosti said. “Every state should ensure its citizens safety and not exploit technological weaknesses.” The "leak is not a weapon in the hands of criminals, because the only value of the weapon is secrecy,” Agosti said. “Hacking Team has invested high-paid expertise in finding ways to obscure their malware from antivirus software” and those investments are now “burned,” he said. Other software providers that use similar infection strategies are also “burned,” but Agosti said this is very good because many espionage attacks use the same strategy. Having this information publicly available increases awareness, Agosti said. “The only reasonable compromise is heavy regulation on when and where such powerful weapons can be used.” Hacking Team provided a “lawful surveillance system” to law enforcement for more than a decade that was critical to preventing and investigating crime and terrorism, CEO David Vincenzetti said in a statement Tuesday. “Because of the increasing encryption of data transmitted over mobile devices and the Internet, this work has never been more critical than it is today.” Due to the comprehensive and powerful surveillance capabilities of its software, the Hacking Team system was available only to government agencies, Vincenzetti said, and when circumstances changed, “we have ended relationships with clients such as Sudan, Ethiopia and Russia.” Vincenzetti said the hack was reported to Italian authorities who are investigating the breach along with authorities of other nations. Hacking Team is completely revising its system, Vincenzetti said.