Company Sends Bogus Copyright Takedown Over Hacking Team Docs

from the good-luck-with-that-strategy dept

We've already written about the hack and leak of the Hacking Team and all its emails and files. There are likely to be tons of stories coming out from that hack over the next few days and weeks as people go through everything. However, it appears that someone is at least making a pretty ridiculous and half-hearted attempt to stuff that genie back in the bottle. Security consultant Mustafa Al-Bassam noted on Twitter that he received a copyright takedown notice for his mirror of the files from a different company, Lexsi.

I just got a DMCA complaint from one of Hacking Team's clients (@lexsi). pic.twitter.com/uoLTQySreI

— Mustafa Al-Bassam (@musalbas) July 6, 2015

If you can't read the letter, it clearly shows Lexsi making a copyright claim since it includes the "Copyright Holder's Name" in the list at the top. But in the body of the message, it makes a random claim about "sensitive and confidential information" rather than infringing information:

Hello,

We have just identified that the website musalbas.com/ displays sensitive and confidential information.

We would be grateful if you transmit the identify of the hosting provider in order to retrieve the sensitve documents.

Please confirm the reception of our request by responding to this email.

Thank you in advance for your help and feel free to contact us should you need more information.

At first Al-Bassam thinks that Lexsi must be a Hacking Team client, but then notes that there's no listing of Lexsi in the documents (which include customer rolls). It's possible that the client relationship runs the other way. Lexsi claims it does "cybercrime mitigation," so it's possible that Hacking Team (or others?) hired the company to try to bury the Hacking Team documents -- though that seems like an unenviable, if Sisyphean, task. Either way, whatever Lexsi was thinking here, it seems unlikely to have the desired impact.

Filed Under: copyright, france, hacking team, mustafa al-bassam, takedown
Companies: hacking team, lexsi

Hacking Team Hacked: Documents Show Company Sold Exploits And Spyware To UN-Blacklisted Governments

from the I-would-imagine-there-are-plenty-of-new-openings-on-its-appointment-calendar dept

Hacking Team -- purveyor of exploits and spyware to a variety of government agencies all over the world -- has been hacked. Late Sunday night, its Twitter account name was changed to "Hacked Team" and its bio to read:

Developing ineffective, easy-to-pwn offensive technology to compromise the operations of the worldwide law enforcement and intelligence communities.

Whoever's behind this (no group has claimed responsibility yet) has repurposed the official Hacking Team Twitter feed to send out screenshots of incriminating information it/they have uncovered. For those who want to take a look themselves, the liberated documents can be torrented. Here are two places the torrent file can be picked up. (CAUTION: Actual file is 400 GB, so use a robust client and check your drive[s] for free space…) [And, if those go down, I've also stashed the torrent file here.]

What has been exposed so far shows Hacking Team has been lying about its business partners. It claims to only sell to NATO partners and blacklists oppressive governments. But its "Customer" Wiki appears to show that it counts such countries as Kazakhstan, Sudan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Malaysia as partners.

Screenshots of emails accessed by Hacking Team's hackers show the company circumventing local regulations and restrictions on the export of exploits and spyware by using third-party resellers.

If you can't see/read the screenshot, here's the pertinent information. The email subject is "Remote Control Davinci System Into Nigeria." Underneath that is the proposed third-party process for sneaking Hacking Team's "Davinci" past import/export restrictions:

Commissions and meeting:

Being an Italian company, we are following the guidelines of our exterior ministry.

Understanding that this is an uncommon circumstance, this is what we are proposing:

HackingTeam will sell directly to your company and then TunsmosPetroleum will add its own mark up. The price you will purchase from us will include a discount on the list price as a compensation for the 1st meeting/demo in Milan and the training (in Milan as well) after the sale.

Other screenshots further confirm Hacking Team's efforts in forbidden markets. One shows the company dealing with a "Sudan Citizen Lab request," suggesting its end user(s) are uncomfortable with the investigative activities CL is performing.

ACLU technologist Chris Soghoian has taken a look at the files and uncovered even more incriminating information, including Hacking Team's stonewalling of a UN investigation into its sales in Sudan. This investigation is the direct result of Citizen Lab's investigative work. According to the files viewed by Soghoian, Hacking Team has denied any "current sales relationship" with Sudan, at least in terms of selling the sort of weaponized software forbidden by multiple treaties and UN resolutions. It claimed the software isn't weaponized tech. The UN disagreed.

Your letter 1029 of 13 March 2015 also stated that the company did not consider the Remote Control Software to be a weapon, and therefore fell outside the parameters of the sanctions regime. 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…

There's still plenty more to be uncovered in the document dump. Soghoian has already uncovered a spreadsheet listing every government customer, along with revenue to date.

Whatever happens from here on out should prove very interesting. Hacking Team is in for the longest Monday ever.

Filed Under: citizen lab, governments, hacking team, hacking tools, sudan, un
Companies: hacking team