Pierluigi Paganini
July 15, 2015
While the security experts are continuing to analyze the impressive amount of data stolen from the Hacking Team, new revelation are circulating over the Internet.
Among the clients of the Italian security firm, there is also the FBI that acquired the popular surveillance software from the company. The experts discovered that the FBI paid the company to de-anonymize Tor users.
“The FBI unit that is using our system seems like a pretty small operation and they have purchased RCS as a sort of back up to some other system they use. They seem likely to renew, but they spent this year’s budget money on something else (so as not to lose the allocation). There is a possibility of extra money freeing up on September” continues the content of the leaked email.
According to a series of emails exchanged between the company representatives and the FBI, the US law enforcement agency in September has bought the last version of the Remote Control System (RCS), aka Galileo. According to the company Galileo has the ability to reveal the IP address of a Tor user.
“We’ll need to send him an email with a document or PDF [attachment] to hopefully install the scout [Hacking Team’s software],” the FBI agent wrote in the email.
“[The FBI] continue to be interested in new features all the more related to TOR, [virtual private networks] VPN and less click infections,” the same FBI agent said in other emails. “In the past their targets were 20 per cent on TOR, now they are 60 per cent on TOR.”
(Security Affairs – Tor Network, Hacking Team)
