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The Hacking Teams: who they are, what they want, and how they hack
TechRepublic However, its monitoring and encryption-breaking software FinFisher and FinSpy Mobile has been deployed by the governments of Egypt, Bahrain, and Uganda against internal and external protest, government, business, and NGO targets. Deep Panda. |
Since cybercrime laws lag behind technology, lawyers are constantly seeking creative ways to stretch old laws to fit new crimes, such as the latest – comparing the movie-sharing app Popcorn Time to a burglar’s tool in order to press criminal charges.
Lawyers for an Adam Sandler movie are arguing that Popcorn Time performs the same function as burglars’ tools in order “to commit or facilitate … a theft by physical taking,” language used in an old Oregon law about traditional burglary.
The lawyers say Popcorn Time lets users violate the movie’s copyrights by enabling downloads of pirated copies, and so they are suing for the civil crime of copyright infringement.
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Microsoft today issued one of its sporadic emergency, or “out-of-band,” security updates to patch a vulnerability in Windows — including the yet-to-be-released Windows 10 — that was uncovered by researchers sifting through the massive cache of emails leaked after a breach of Italian surveillance vendor Hacking Team.
The Milan-based vendor sells surveillance software to governments and corporations, and markets zero-day vulnerabilities that its clients can use to silently infect targets with the firm’s software. Researchers have found several zero-days — flaws that were not fixed before they went public — in the gigabytes of pilfered documents and messages, including three in Adobe’s Flash Player, since July 5.
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The Adobe Flash zero-day exploit that spyware developer Hacking Team made available to customers worked successfully against even the advanced defenses found in Google’s Chrome browser, researchers said Friday. They also noted that it was used to infect computer users multiple times before it was leaked.
Google developers patched the underlying Flash vulnerability in Chrome on Tuesday (for proof, use enter about:version in the address bar and note the Flash version), and Adobe published a general fix a day later.
The leak of the previously unknown exploit resulting from the devastating hack of Hacking Team last weekend and exploit kits available on the black market quickly added attack code to use the flaw. It allows attackers to surreptitiously install malware on targets’ computers, and there’s evidence that before last weekend’s breach, Hacking Team customers used the Flash zero-day against live targets.
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