Italian spyware firm relies on U.S. Internet servers

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/italian-spyware-firm-relies-on-us-internet-servers/2014/03/03/25f94f12-9f00-11e3-b8d8-94577ff66b28_story.html

By Ellen Nakashima and Ashkan Soltani
The Washington Post
March 3, 2014

An Italian computer spyware firm, whose tools foreign governments 
allegedly have used to snoop on dissidents and journalists, relies heavily 
on the servers of U.S. Internet companies, according to a new report.

At least 20 percent of the servers used by clients of Hacking Team, based 
in Milan, are located in the United States, effectively making the 
companies that own those servers key nodes in a hidden global network of 
spyware servers, according to a report to be released Tuesday by Citizen 
Lab, at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs.

The discovery raises ethical questions for the cloud companies whose 
servers Hacking Team clients use to surreptitiously take control of 
targets’ computers and phones, turn on Web cameras and intercept encrypted 
communications. And it comes amid a growing cry for export controls on 
such software.

The United States was home to the single largest concentration of Hacking 
Team servers detected since May 2012, according to the researchers. Of the 
555 machines identified worldwide, the researchers found that 80 belonged 
to Linode, a New Jersey firm, and that 40 of those were in the United 
States.

[...]

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