The breach of an Italian spyware company Hacking Team is costing the company a lot. Not only significant corporate data has been stolen from the company but also the breach, provied the company was "providing" spyware to certain government agencies, reports Wired Magazine.
Hacking Team twitter account was renamed into "Hacked Team" shortly after the breach. Its account has since then been restored.
"Hacking Team is the vendor of a surveillance software known as Da Vinci. Files reveal that Hacking Team customers include South Korea, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Egypt, Nigeria and Sudan" writes Wired.
Many times before, organizations such as Reporters Without Borders and Citizen Lab raised red flags about the company. In its 2015 report, Privacy International concludes "Hacking Team has a consistent track record of delivering its software, including the Remote Control System (RCS) to government agencies with records of human rights abuse and unlawful surveilance, and its products have been repeatedly used to conduct unlawful surveillance of journalists, activists and human rights defenders".
RCS surveillance infrastructure can take the data from a target's device and transfer it to the alleged law enforcement server.
Citizen Lab, identified RCS endpoint in Azerbaijan active in June and November 2013. In its 2012 report, Freedom House concluded that in Azerbaijan, surveillance technologies are common especially when it comes to blanket surveillance on mobile phone users. Azerbaijan ranked "partly free" on Freedom House "Freedom on the Net" reports.