Alwaght - A team of hackers breached an Italian spyware manufacturer's systems and leaked 400GB of internal documents, revealing Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Sudan, Morocco, and Oman and have recently purchased spyware from the company.
Information obtained from Hacking Team, revealed that Bahraini regime recently purchased spyware from the company as the latest maintenance of these spyware programs took place during 2015, Bahrain Mirror reported on Friday saying that "The documents obtained by hackers from the Italian-based spyware company confirm that Bahrain renewed its contract with the company on May 5,2015".
Hacking Team is an Italian spyware company, founded in 2003, which sells powerful malware surveillance tools to governments and law enforcement agencies seeking to monitor personal information and spy on people.
"Hacking Team targets people by fake Koran, bible and game apps and then films them and records their voices," Saudi analyst and CEO of Cyberkov Abdullah Al-Ali told Bahraini-based website , adding that the company's programs are not limited to hacking and spying, they also able to plant data in the victim's computer, "if Hacking Team sees that you are innocent, they plant terrorist content, like information about bomb making and child rape videos, and then arrest you."
Al-Ali went on to say that "Hacking Team even deceives its clients. It sells them spyware so that they could spy on their targets while it spies on them."
"The Lebanese Intelligence signed a contract with the company worth USD 1,156.000 of digital spyware services. The Sudanese Intelligence signed a contract worth USD 480,000 with Hacking Team to hack people's devices and phones and spy on them," said Al-Ali.
Bahrain Mirror cited Mohammed al-Maskati, the digital security consultant with Front Line Defenders for Middle East and North Africa, as saying that "The Hacking Team spyware can breach encrypted files and emails, Skype and other Voice over IP or chat communication, copy local files and turn on the device camera. The spyware can also log every keystroke, which will include sensitive information and passwords".
The European Parliament called on the Italian authorities to conduct an "urgent, thorough investigation" into Hacking Team's sale, while the company requested all its customers to shut down all operations and suspend all use of the company's spyware.
The hack of the developed spyware company (Hacking Team) is the second after the Hack of spying company Gamma FinFisher in early 2015, which sold surveillance programs to Al Khalifa Regime helping it to spy on opposition activist and leaders who were both named enemies of the internet."
A team of hackers had hacked into the systems of Gamma, a UK and Germany-based major surveillance technology company in August 2014, and leaked 40GB of its internal data. The obtained documents revealed that the company sold FinFisher and FinSpy software to Bahrain.
One of the Hacking Team's products is Da Vinci which enables the attacker, usually a government entity, to infiltrate and control the device of the target and covert collection of emails, text message, and phone call history and address books.
Reporters Without Borders also stated that this spyware allows the governments to Hijack telephone GPS systems to monitor the target's location and turn on and eavesdrop via a computer's webcam.
