Category Archives: Hacking Team

Israeli hacking company NSO Group is on sale for more than $1 billion

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The Israeli hacking company NSO Group has been put up for sale for a price of more than $1 billion, according to multiple people familiar with the matter. The U.S.-based private equity firm Francisco Partners Management, which owns NSO Group, is looking to bring in around 10 times the $120 million it paid for a majority stake in the company in 2014. The group grew from around 50 employees when it was acquired to nearly 10 times that size, including more than 200 engineers dedicated to the hacking products that bring in the company’s rising profits. NSO, which is known for selling cutting-edge offensive hacking technology to governments around the world, traces its roots and to the Israeli military’s world-renowned signals intelligence unit known as Unit 8200. The Israeli business publication Calcalist reported that NSO Group was being shopped around last month. CyberScoop independently spoke with numerous NSO business associates who confirmed that report. NSO Group and Francisco Partners both […]

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‘Amateurish’ espionage campaign launched with leaked Hacking Team tools

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A mysterious group appears to be relying on hacking tools that were originally stolen from Italian surveillance company Hacking Team — and leaked online two years ago — to spy on European government officials, think tanks and journalists, according to new research published Thursday by cybersecurity firm F-Secure. Dubbed the “Callisto Group,” the hackers were first discovered by F-Secure after they sent a wave of phishing emails to a wide array of different targets that were all similarly involved in either discussing or reporting on government policies related to foreign affairs and national security. The BBC reported Thursday that one of those targets was the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Several F-Secure contacts received the suspicious phishing emails and sent samples to the Finnish company. The final payload for the malware-laden attachments contained, according to F-Secure, an outdated variant of the Hacking Team’s “Scout” tool, which is typically sold as part […]

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Elite spies used leaked Hacking Team code to learn techniques and hide attacks

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Highly sophisticated hackers are poaching components from a leaked library of exploits originally created by infamous Italian spyware maker Hacking Team — even though tools built with this copied code could be detected by basic antivirus products. Cybersecurity experts are confounded by the decision to include this code in the elite hackers’ malware, especially given that some groups adopting the material are conceivably capable of developing more evasive and effective exploits on their own. “To be honest, it doesn’t really make much sense,” said Cylance Director of Threat Intelligence Jon Gross. “This one sort of puzzled us … while you might see the criminal underground doing this, I wouldn’t immediately suspect an APT.” A mysterious, self-described black hat hacker named Phineas Phisher breached Hacking Team in 2015 and posted a trove of internal company documents and other data online. Some of the company’s exploits — like those that can compromise more recent […]

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Police Arrested Suspected Hacker Who Hacked the ‘Hacking Team’

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Remember the Hacker who hacked Hacking Team?

In 2015, a hacker named Phineas Fisher hacked Hacking Team – the Italy-based spyware company that sells spying software to law enforcement agencies worldwide – and exposed some 500 gigabytes of internal data for anyone to download.

Now, the Spanish authorities believe that they have arrested Phineas Fisher, who was not just behind the embarrassing

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Dangerous Android threat points to Italian spyware maker

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A piece of Android spyware recently analyzed by researchers with the RedNaga Security team seemed to be yet another Hacking Team spying tool but, according to more recent revelations, another Italian company is its likely source. Researcher Tim Strazzere, with help of his colleagues, analyzed the sample received practically directly from the target (who wished to remain anonymous), and discovered that the spyware: Asks for practically every permission Can hide itself from the launcher, ensure … More → Continue reading Dangerous Android threat points to Italian spyware maker→

37-Year-Old ‘Syrian Electronic Army’ Hacker Pleads Guilty in US court

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One of the FBI’s Most Wanted Hackers who was arrested in Germany earlier this year has pleaded guilty to federal charges for his role in a scheme that hacked computers and targeted the US government, foreign governments, and multiple US media outlets.
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NSA’s Hacking Group Hacked! Bunch of Private Hacking Tools Leaked Online

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It seems like the NSA has been HACKED!

Update: The NSA Hack — What, When, Where, How, Who & Why? Explained Here.

An unknown hacker or a group of hackers just claimed to have hacked into “Equation Group” — a cyber-attack group allegedly associated with the United States intelligence organization NSA — and dumped a bunch of its hacking tools (malware, private exploits, and hacking tools)

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