‘Complete Control’: Notorious Surveillance Contractor Tech Uncovered

Hacking Team, a company which has been described
as an “enemy
of the Internet,” provides law enforcement and intelligence
agencies with legal “offensive technology” to infiltrate and
remotely control people’s phones and other digital devices. The
extent of this company’s capabilities remain murky, but two groups
of Internet security experts say they have just exposed some of
their surveillance firepower and the fact that Hacking Team has
more servers spitting out malware based in the U.S. than any other
country.  

“Our latest research has identified mobile modules that work on
all well-known mobile platforms, including as Android and iOS” as
well as Windows Mobile and BlackBerry,
announced the Russian-based Kaspersky Lab on Tuesday. “These
modules … translate into complete control over the environment in
and near a victim’s computer.” Indeed, the governments who use
Hacking Team technology can turn on a cellphone’s microphone,
camera, and GPS unnoticed. They can also access people’s email,
call history, chats, browsing history, among many other potentially
incriminating data. 

“It’s long been known that law enforcement and intelligence
agencies worldwide use Hacking Team’s tools to spy on computer and
mobile phone users—including, in some countries, to spy on
political dissidents, journalists and human rights advocates,”

explains Wired. “This is the first time, however, that
the modules used to spy on mobile phone users have been uncovered
in the wild and reverse-engineered.”

One of the biggest doozies of the
Kaspersky Lab report is that the U.S., by far, houses the most
Hacking Team servers, which are part of a “huge infrastructure that
is used to control the [remote control system] malware implants.”
There are 64 known servers here, compared to 49 in Kazakhstan, 35
in Ecuador, 32 in the United Kingdom. Most of the other 40
countries that the lab traced Hacking Team malware back to have
only one or two servers.

The lab cautions, “we can’t be sure that the servers in a
certain country are used by that specific country’s LEAs [law
enforcement agencies]; however, it would make sense for LEAs to put
their [command and control servers] in their own countries in order
to avoid cross-border legal problems and the seizure of servers.”
Likewise, it’s no secret that the company has
aggressively marketed itself to American government
officials.

Hacking Team spokesman Eric Rabe quick to downplay the findings
as “old news,”
according to the Associated Press. “We believe the software we
provide is essential for law enforcement and for the safety of all
in an age when terrorists, drug dealers and sex traffickers and
other criminals routinely use the Internet and mobile
communications to carry out their crimes,” he assured.

However, Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, which
produced a report alongside Kaspersky Lab’s and has long kept an
eye on Hacking Team,
reitereates that the company’s products have a history of
being used to target journalists and activists around the
world.

“This in many ways is the police surveillance of the now and the
future,”
cautions Morgan Marquis-Boire, a lead author on the report and
a security researcher with Citizen Lab. “What we need to actually
decide how we’re comfortable with it being used and under what
circumstances.”