July 12, 2015
Italian cyber-security firm Hacking Team said a government might have been behind a massive hack of its systems and warned that the subsequent leaking of its computer codes could prove a field day for criminals.
Unknown hackers last week downloaded 400GB of data from the firm, which makes surveillance software that allows law enforcement and intelligence agencies to tap into the phones and computers of suspects.
Much of the data, including thousands of private corporate emails, has since been dumped onto the Wikileaks website. The source code of a number of its top secret programs has also been published online.
“Given its complexity, I think that the attack must have been carried out at a government level, or by someone who has huge funds at their disposal,” David Vincenzetti, the CEO of Hacking Team, told Sunday’s La Stampa newspaper.
He did not speculate on who it might have been.