Hacking Team says “We’re the good guys” after the cyber attack

A few days back, the Italy based security surveillance firm, Hacking team’s website and twitter account was hacked by group of unknown people. The 400 GB worth of data that was posted on torrent sites and on the Wikileaks website revealed the type of dealings that the firm was into. The names of the countries that surfaced were the ones that the firm had been denying any relation with. The Hacking Team had promised to go after the people who were responsible for this and bring them to light. After the hack, most of the critical data of the firm was online for everybody to see. It was revealed that it produces the platform Da Vinci, which allows the governments to monitor encrypted communications of its citizens. This technology created by the Hacking Team is used by the governments all over the world to read your private e-mails, listen in to your Skype chats and secretly watch your activities through your own webcam. The other reason for the people to worry was that the company was selling spying software to countries like Ethiopia, Uzbekistan etc. which were well known for torturing, jailing and killing journalists and other people that disagreed with the government. However, the company stopped working with Ethiopia after it was accused of monitoring the journalists through their software. Ever since facts like this were revealed the Firm came under scrutiny and many people were enraged by this type of invasion on their privacy.

Now, the CEO of Hacking Team has come forwards to defend the firm saying that the company is relatively harmless since it does not sell any guns that could be used to kill people. David Vincenzetti, the CEO said that his software was used to monitor and fight the criminals that are operating on the border between the state of law and lawlessness.  However, saying that they are the good guys does not change anything, the software being used is in clear violation of the privacy of the people. David told the press that he believes that the attack was carried out at governmental level and was done by someone with access to significant resources. However, he did not point out any one but said that it was being planned out for months.

Cyber-attacks have been there for a long time but are now becoming more common and notorious as the hackers are getting fearless and more advanced. The hackers make total use of the vulnerabilities online, especially the zero-day exploits that the Hacking Team had been stockpiling over the years. The zero-day exploits are the loopholes in software that are invisible even to the creator. Since these are undetectable even by the creators, it makes it impossible to guard them.