Hacking the hackers
Authorities using cybercriminals’ tactics against them
LONDON — Law enforcement agencies across the globe are taking a page out of the cybercriminal handbook, using targets’ own phones and computers to spy on them with methods traditionally associated with the world’s most malicious hackers, two computer security groups said Tuesday.
Drawing on a cache of leaked documents and months of forensic work, two reports about the private Italian firm Hacking Team expose a global network of malicious software implants operated by police and spy agencies in dozens of countries. They also suggest that the lines between high-tech police work and malicious hacking are blurring.
“In the past, the distinction was pretty easy: If it’s mal- ware, there’s someone bad behind it,” said Costin Raiu, a senior security researcher at Russian anti-virus firm Kaspersky. “The notion of good guys and bad guys is becoming diluted.”
The reports by Kaspersky and the Toronto-based Citizen Lab help complete the picture of state-sanctioned surveillance sketched by Edward Snowden’s sensational revelations about the National Security Agency and its international allies.
While many of Snowden’s revelations dealt with the mass monitoring of communication as it flows across the globe, Hacking Team brags about more aggressive forms of monitoring that let authorities turn people’s phones and laptops into eavesdropping tools.
Hacking Team, based in Milan, did not return several messages seeking comment.
On its website, the company takes pains to present itself as one of the good guys. In a moody promotional video with a gravelly voice-over, it boasts of being able to steal text messages, eavesdrop on Skype calls and take control of hundreds of thousands of targeted devices at a time.
Hacking Team’s customer policy says it sells only to governments, which it screens for human rights concerns. A company-established panel of technical experts and legal advisers checks out every potential client, Hacking Team says, and while it realizes that its software can be abused, “we take a number of precautions to limit the potential for that abuse.”