founded 2003 founders david vincenzetti valeriano bedeschi headquarters milan italy key people alberto ornaghi alor marco valleri naga products software website www.hackingteam.it hackingteam is a milan based information technology company that sells offensive intrusion and surveillance capabilities to governments law enforcement agencies and corporations . 1 its remote control systems enable governments and corporations to monitor the communications of internet users decipher their encrypted files and emails record skype and other voice over ip communications and remotely activate microphones and camera on target computers . 2 the company has been criticized for providing these capabilities to governments with poor human rights records . 3 hackingteam states that they have the ability to disable their software if it is used unethically . 4 5 the italian government has restricted their license to do business with countries outside europe . 6 hackingteam employs around 40 people in its italian office and has subsidiary branches in annapolis washington d.c. and singapore . 7 its products are in use in dozens of countries across six continents . 8 contents 1 history 2 products and capabilities 3 controversies 3.1 use by repressive governments 3.2 2015 data breach 4 customer list 5 see also 6 references 7 external links history edit hackingteam was started by two italian programmers alberto ornaghi and marco valleri . prior to the company s formal establishment ornaghi and valleri under the aliases of alor and naga respectively created a set of tools that could be used to monitor and remotely manipulate target computers . the program called ettercap was embraced both by hackers looking to spy on people and by companies that hoped to test the security of their own networks . the milan police department learned of the tools . hoping to use ettercap to spy on italian citizens and listen to their skype calls the police contacted ornaghi and valleri and asked them to help modify the program . hackingteam was born and became the first sellers of commercial hacking software to the police . 8 according to former employee alberto pelliccione the company began as security services provider offering penetration testing auditing and other defensive capabilities to clients . 9 pelliccione states that as malware and other offensive capabilities were developed and accounted for a larger percentage of revenues the organization pivoted in a more offensive direction and became increasingly compartmentalized . pelliccione claims fellow employees working on aspects of the same platform for example android exploits and payloads would not communicate with one another possibly leading to tensions and strife within the organization . 9 in february 2014 a report from citizen lab identified the organisation to be using hosting services from linode telecom italia rackspace noc4hosts and notorious bullet proof hosting company santrex . 10 on july 5 2015 the company suffered a major data breach of customer data software code internal documents and emails . see 2015 data breach products and capabilities edit hackingteam enables clients to perform remote monitoring functions against citizens via their rcs remote control systems including their da vinci and galileo platforms 1 covert collection of emails text message phone call history and address books keystroke logging uncover search history data and take screenshots record audio from phone calls capture audio and video stream from device memory to bypass cryptography of skype sessions 11 use microphones on device to collect ambient background noise and conversations activate phone or computer cameras hijack telephone gps systems to monitor target s location infect target computer s uefi bios firmware with a rootkit 12 extract wifi passwords 13 exfiltrate bitcoin and other cryptocurrency wallet files to collect data on local accounts contacts and transaction histories . 14 hackingteam uses advanced techniques to avoid draining cell phone batteries which could potentially raise suspicions and other methods to avoid detection . 15 16 the malware has payloads for android 13 blackberry apple ios linux mac os x symbian as well as microsoft windows windows mobile and windows phone class of operating systems . 17 rcs is a management platform that allows operators to remotely deploy exploits and payloads against targeted systems remotely manage devices once compromised and exfiltrate data for remote analysis . controversies edit use by repressive governments edit hackingteam has been criticized for selling its products and services to governments with poor human rights records including sudan bahrain venezuela and saudi arabia . 18 in june 2014 a united nations panel monitoring the implementation of sanctions on sudan requested information from hackingteam about their alleged sales of software to the country in contravention of united nations weapons export bans to sudan . documents leaked in the 2015 data breach of hackingteam revealed the organization sold sudanese national intelligence and security service access to their remote control system software in 2012 for 960 000 euros . 18 19 in response to the united nations panel the company responded in january 2015 that they were not currently selling to sudan . in a follow up exchange hackingteam asserted that their product was not controlled as a weapon and so the request was beyond the scope of the panel . there was no need for them to disclose previous sales which they considered confidential business information . 18 20 the u.n. disagreed . the view of the panel is that as such software is ideally suited to support military electronic intelligence elint operations it may potentially fall under the category of military equipment or assistance related to prohibited items the secretary wrote in march . thus its potential use in targeting any of the belligerents in the darfur conflict is of interest to the panel . 18 21 in the fall of 2014 the italian government abruptly froze all of hackingteam s exports citing human rights concerns . after lobbying italian officials the company temporarily won back the right to sell its products abroad . 18 2015 data breach edit this section needs to be updated . please update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information . january 2016 on july 5 2015 the twitter account of the company was compromised by an unknown individual who published an announcement of a data breach against hackingteam s computer systems . the initial message read since we have nothing to hide we re publishing all our e mails files and source code and provided links to over 400 gigabytes of data including alleged internal e mails invoices and source code ; which were leaked via bittorrent and mega . 22 an announcement of the data breach including a link to the bittorrent seed was retweeted by wikileaks and by many others through social media . 23 24 the material was voluminous and early analysis appeared to reveal that hackingteam had invoiced the lebanese army 25 and sudan and that spy tools were also sold to bahrain and kazakhstan . 24 hackingteam had previously claimed they had never done business with sudan . 26 the leaked data revealed a zero day cross platform flash exploit cve number cve 2015 5119 . 27 the dump included a demo of this exploit by opening calculator from a test webpage . 28 29 adobe patched the hole on july 8 2015 . 30 another vulnerability involving adobe was revealed in the dumps which took advantage of a buffer overflow attack on an adobe open type manager dll included with microsoft windows . the dll is run in kernel mode so the attack could perform privilege escalation to bypass the sandbox . 31 also revealed in leaked data was hackingteam employees use of weak passwords including p4ssword wolverine and universo . 32 after a few hours without response from hackingteam member christian pozzi tweeted the company was working closely with police and what the attackers are claiming regarding our company is not true . 33 34 he also claimed the leaked archive contains a virus and that it constituted false info . 35 shortly after these tweets pozzi s twitter account itself was apparently compromised . 36 responsibility for this attack was claimed by the hacker known as phineas fisher or phisher on twitter . 37 phineas has previously attacked spyware firm gamma international who produce malware such as finfisher for governments and corporations . 38 in 2016 phineas published details of the attack in spanish and english as a how to for others and explained the motivations behind the attack . 39 the internal documents revealed details of hackingteam s contracts with repressive governments . 40 in 2016 the italian government again revoked the company s license to sell spyware outside of europe without special permission . 6 41 customer list edit hackingteam s clientele include not just governments but also corporate clients such as barclay s bank and british telecom bt of the united kingdom as well as deutsche bank of germany . 1 a full list of hackingteam s customers were leaked in the 2015 breach . disclosed documents show hackingteam had 70 current customers mostly military police federal and provincial governments . the total company revenues disclosed exceeded 40 million euros . 42 43 44 45 46 47 customer country area agency year first sale annual maintenance fees total client revenues polizia postale e delle comunicazioni 48 italy europe lea 2004 100 000 808 833 centro nacional de inteligencia 49 spain europe intelligence 2006 52 000 538 000 infocomm development authority of singapore singapore apac intelligence 2008 89 000 1 209 967 information office hungary europe intelligence 2008 41 000 885 000 csdn morocco mea intelligence 2009 140 000 1 936 050 updf uganda peoples defense force iso internal security organization office of the president uganda africa intelligence 2015 831 000 52 197 100 italy da rental italy europe other 2009 50 000 628 250 malaysian anti corruption commission malaysia apac intelligence 2009 77 000 789 123 pcm italy europe intelligence 2009 90 000 764 297 ssns ungheria hungary europe intelligence 2009 64 000 1 011 000 cc italy italy europe lea 2010 50 000 497 349 al mukhabarat al a amah saudi arabia mea intelligence 2010 45 000 600 000 ir authorities condor luxembourg europe other 2010 45 000 446 000 la dependencia y o cisen 50 mexico latam intelligence 2010 130 000 1 390 000 uzc 51 czech republic europe lea 2010 55 000 689 779 egypt mod 51 egypt mea other 2011 70 000 598 000 federal bureau of investigation 52 usa north america lea 2011 100 000 697 710 oman intelligence oman mea intelligence 2011 30 000 500 000 president security 53 54 panama latam intelligence 2011 110 000 750 000 turkish national police turkey europe lea 2011 45 000 440 000 uae moi uae mea lea 2011 90 000 634 500 national security service 51 uzbekistan europe intelligence 2011 50 000 917 038 department of defense 52 usa north america lea 2011 190 000 bayelsa state government nigeria mea intelligence 2012 75 000 450 000 estado del mexico mexico latam lea 2012 120 000 783 000 information network security agency ethiopia mea intelligence 2012 80 000 750 000 state security falcon luxemburg europe other 2012 38 000 316 000 italy da rental italy europe other 2012 60 000 496 000 mal mi malaysia apac intelligence 2012 77 000 552 000 direction g n rale de la surveillance du territoire morocco mea intelligence 2012 160 000 1 237 500 national intelligence and security service 51 sudan mea intelligence 2012 76 000 960 000 russia kvant 55 russia europe intelligence 2012 72 000 451 017 saudi gid saudi mea lea 2012 114 000 1 201 000 sis of national security committee of kazakhstan 51 kazakhstan europe intelligence 2012 140 000 1 012 500 the 5163 army division alias of south korean national intelligence service 51 56 57 s. korea apac other 2012 67 000 686 400 uae intelligence uae mea other 2012 150 000 1 200 000 drug enforcement administration 52 58 usa north america other 2012 70 000 567 984 central anticorruption bureau poland