A massive leak of the Italian cyber-surveillance firm Hacking Team’s data showed that one of its key corporate partners is Nice Systems, a company with close links to Israeli military and intelligence agencies. The leaked documents showed that Nice Systems has been closing deals for its Italian partner all over the world including Azerbaijan and Thailand, according to Boingboing.net.
Boingboing.net points that a number of the published materials reveal that Hacking Team sold spying products to Azerbaijan — a notorious human-rights abuser. Mexico, Bahrain, Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Vietnam, Russia, Honduras, Ethiopia and Egypt were among the Hacking Team’s customers.
Speaking to International Business Times UK, spokesman of the company, Eric Rabe, said that they were not hiding their activities and that there was no evidence in that 400GB of data that they had violated any law.
ABC.net writes that according to leaked documents, Australian law enforcement and intelligence services have been in secret talks with an Italian-based surveillance company notorious for helping repressive states like Sudan. Earlier this year, UK-based organization Privacy International wrote a briefing to the Italian government, outlining their concerns about Hacking Team’s operations.
“There were 46 countries altogether that have purchased Hacking Team’s products. That goes to Egypt, Bahrain, Tunisia — which we had never known about before — Azerbaijan and Sudan,” Matthew Rice from Privacy International said.
According to OCCRP (Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project), the leak of the Hacking Team’s data revealed that Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Defense licensed the company’s surveillance spyware Remote Control System (RCS) which helped access personal computers and smartphones. Citizen Lab documented an RCS endpoint active in Azerbaijan from June to November 2013, but is unclear who was under surveillance. Ministry of Defense of Azerbaijan purchased an RCS license via a California-based intermediary called Horizon Global Group in 2013. Hacking Team invoices show Horizon made payments of €130,000 on March 10, 2013 and €190,000 on May 30, 2013 for an initial RCS license.
Related:
Hacking attack on Italy-based cybersecurity firm reveals its cooperation with repressive regime in Azerbaijan
Mashable.com: Azerbaijani special services use spyware to monitor computers