An individual who did work for Hacking Team was in contact with hackers working for a terrorist organization, and disgruntled employees—who deny the charge—were planning to sell an antidote to the spyware vendor’s surveillance software, an Italian newspaper reported Friday.A general in the Italian foreign intelligence service (AISE), identified as “G” in internal emails published by WikiLeaks three weeks ago, told Hacking Team CEO David Vincenzetti that “an ex-collaborator of Hacking Team is working with foreign hackers who collaborate with terrorist organizations,” according to Il Fatto Quotidiano.Hacking Team, a Milan-based company that sold surveillance software to law enforcement agencies around the world and was criticized for helping oppressive regimes crack down on their political opponents, suffered a disastrous security breach at the beginning of July, with 400 GB of confidential information eventually dumped online.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Italian police have shut down a Dark Web marketplace offering illegal goods ranging from child pornography to forged luncheon vouchers, and seized 11,000 bitcoin wallets worth about 1 million euros, authorities said Friday.Officials compared the marketplace discovered by “Operation Babylon” to the Silk Road online black market that was taken down by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation in 2013.More than 14,000 people had signed up to the illegal community, which was allegedly run by an Italian living near Naples. There was evidence of 170,000 transaction messages on the Tor platform, which provided 12 kinds of hidden services, police said. These ranged from pornographic images to arms, drugs, false identity papers, hacker kits and credit card codes.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The Italian parliament wants to have its say in the creation of an international legal framework promoting freedom, equality and access to cyberspace for all, and on Tuesday it presented a Declaration of Internet Rights that it will bring to the Internet Governance Forum in Brazil in November.“This is the first time that a parliament produces a declaration on Internet rights of constitutional inspiration and international scope,” Laura Boldrini, the speaker of the lower house of parliament and a major backer of the project, told a press conference in Rome. Boldrini said she hoped parliament would pass a motion calling on the Italian government to promote the document in national and international forums. The document was drawn up by a commission headed by Stefano Rodotà, a former politician and jurist.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The founder of the Italian surveillance software company that suffered a disastrous data breach last week sought to reassure clients on Tuesday about the gravity of the intrusion, insisting that Hacking Team’s anti-terrorism work has not been jeopardized.“If the client has followed our instructions there are no problems for security. Only a part of the source code has been stolen,” Hacking Team CEO David Vincenzetti told reporters at Milan’s Palace of Justice after a five-hour interrogation by Prosecutor Alessandro Gobbis.“We have provided clients with instructions which will enable them to restore complete security with the next update,” Vincenzetti said. The CEO said the hack, which resulted in the theft of 400GB of data and the publication of around 1 million company emails on the WikiLeaks website, had not compromised its most innovative products, which were “capable of combatting the phenomenon of terrorism and appreciated by all Western governments.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A judge in Milan banned UberPop in Italy on Tuesday, ruling that the car-hailing service constitutes unfair competition for taxi drivers.Judge Claudio Marangoni said a complaint lodged by taxi drivers’ associations and trade unions was well-founded and the UberPop smartphone app linking private drivers with passengers is provoking a rapid growth in illegal taxi services.Marangoni gave San Francisco-based Uber, which controls a global business estimated to be worth around US$40 billion, 15 weeks to comply with his order or face a fine of €20,000 (US$22,000) per day.Uber had indicated it would appeal a negative ruling and seek to change Italian and European regulations that affect its operations.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Philip Willan