Hacking Team supplied software to Russia

Hacking Team was doing business with Russia and possibly the FSB. This is apparent from internal emails in the hands of WikiLeaks. An employee of the Italian security company confirmed when asked that it supplied spy software to the Russians.

The FSB, or the Federalnaya sluzhba bezopasnosti Rossijskoi Federatsii, is the Russian security service and in fact the direct successor of the KGB. According to research by Ars Technica, the FSB has connections with Advanced Monitoring, to which Hacking Team supplied the spy software.

E-mails in the hands of WikiLeaks show that Hacking Team was doing business with Advanced Monitoring. In another e-mail contact, an employee of the security company confirms the business relationship upon request; there was direct contact from Italy with the Russians, it says. At the time of the recent attack, Russia was no longer a customer, according to Hacking Team.

The contact between Hacking Team and Russia is remarkable for at least two reasons. Firstly, this appears to be evidence that the company also provided its services to governments that do not seem to care too much about human rights. This was suspected, but not yet confirmed. In addition, the Italians may have done business with Russia, which was banned as a sanction after the conflict in Crimea.

Hacking Team was hit by an attack last week, which had its consequences. Since then, news facts have trickled in about the controversial company almost daily. For example, it was announced on Friday that Hacking Team had an app in the Play Store that pretended to be a news app, but that actually served as an entrance for a backdoor.