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Hacking Team hacked, attackers claim 400GB in dumped data

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Re: Hacking Team hacked, attackers claim 400GB in dumped data

#181

Post by curiousjorge »

antirez wrote: post #157

I've no idea about the whole story and what Hacking Team exactly did during the years, but I started to write serious code around 1998 working for Vincenzetti, so I think I can provide some hint about this to counter-balance all the hate. * They allowed me to work on hping, releasing it as free software during most of my working hours. They supported my research that lead to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idle_scan *…

Good to know your personal experiences but doesn't change or paint him or the company in any positive light. Sure the boy next door was quiet and friendly, until he goes on a shooting rampage.

And may I suggest to avoid leaving permanent evidence of association with them, some people might misinterpret what you wrote as defending their actions or might think you helped them where they are today, especially when they are about to be hanged, could be bad for your namesake.

Re: Hacking Team hacked, attackers claim 400GB in dumped data

#182

Post by emidln »

chinathrow wrote: post #148
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alternative to cold wars is hot wars. Do you really want another WWII (60 million dead)? The idea that peace will happen if we make shitty arms is historically untrue. The idea that peace happens when we make cutting-edge arms is historically true.

No for fucks sake, the alternative to hot/cold wars is peace. The idea that we have less dead when access to any kind of arms is heavily restricted, how about that?

There is very little difference between arms and modern industrial chemicals. Without arms, we can still kill large populations by destroying their water supplies and crops. Even if you managed to rid the world of every weapon more advanced than a knife, if/when conflict arises, we can kill populations at a grander scale than ever before.

Re: Hacking Team hacked, attackers claim 400GB in dumped data

#183

Post by JabavuAdams »

Fede_V wrote: post #91

I do not want to sound shockingly naive, but I wonder how these people can sleep at night. You've just sold software to some of the most brutal governments in the world, who will use your technology to track down and brutally torture incredibly brave human rights activists. How can you do this, and still get up in the morning while looking at yourself in the mirror? I can understand petty crime if the alternative is…

Profit + No personal consequences = WIN

Re: Hacking Team hacked, attackers claim 400GB in dumped data

#184

Post by JabavuAdams »

Fede_V wrote: post #91

I do not want to sound shockingly naive, but I wonder how these people can sleep at night. You've just sold software to some of the most brutal governments in the world, who will use your technology to track down and brutally torture incredibly brave human rights activists. How can you do this, and still get up in the morning while looking at yourself in the mirror? I can understand petty crime if the alternative is…

There is a relatively seductive and possibly correct argument that stability and predictability trumps human rights.

It's the reason Russians can be nostalgic for Stalin, etc. Revolution is messy. If the activists who were pressuring Assad for reforms had known that his reaction and the counter-reaction would lead to 250k+ deaths and the destruction of their country, would they have pushed as hard? Would they have been content with a phased approach, even though that would mean continued violations of their human rights?

Re: Hacking Team hacked, attackers claim 400GB in dumped data

#185

Post by antirez »

curiousjorge wrote: post #181
antirez wrote: post #157

I've no idea about the whole story and what Hacking Team exactly did during the years, but I started to write serious code around 1998 working for Vincenzetti, so I think I can provide some hint about this to counter-balance all the hate. * They allowed me to work on hping, releasing it as free software during most of my working hours. They supported my research that lead to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idle_scan *…

Good to know your personal experiences but doesn't change or paint him or the company in any positive light. Sure the boy next door was quiet and friendly, until he goes on a shooting rampage. And may I suggest to avoid leaving permanent evidence of association with them, some people might misinterpret what you wrote as defending their actions or might think you helped them where they are today, especially when they…

I think it's public information that we worked together for some time, however I was never part of the new company "Hacking Team", so any claim of involvement would be far fetched :-) Btw I'm not a fan of eavesdropping on citizens, but I can see how you could use this kind of software to fight organizations like Mafia and other known criminals. So the software they provide is a tool that can be used in a good or bad way. However if they sold to people which are not known by high standards of ethics... and where it is likely there is a freedom-killer use of the software, I think it is not wise to sell to them (not wise or... really bad, actually). Moreover to be truly honest, I'm not a fan for any use of using zero-day security bugs to break into other people systems. I still have this romantic view of security researchers as people that share their findings so that bugs can be fixed.

Re: Hacking Team hacked, attackers claim 400GB in dumped data

#186

Post by sarciszewski »

hacktivistic wrote: post #175
sarciszewski wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've previously had disagreements with Soghoian before, but he's generally reasonable. He's not exactly cartoon villain material.

Generally reasonable? You've gotta be kidding. The guy launches into Twitter rants daily, often blasting away with ad hominems. On balance, I think he probably does more good than harm for our community. But it's a very close call.

Yeah, Twitter's not exactly a medium that promotes civility.

Re: Hacking Team hacked, attackers claim 400GB in dumped data

#187

Post by shenberg »

Fede_V wrote: post #91

I do not want to sound shockingly naive, but I wonder how these people can sleep at night. You've just sold software to some of the most brutal governments in the world, who will use your technology to track down and brutally torture incredibly brave human rights activists. How can you do this, and still get up in the morning while looking at yourself in the mirror? I can understand petty crime if the alternative is…

I've asked people who work in these fields those same questions. Answers were along the lines of "someone else will do it if I don't" or "it's less violent than the actual violence the government would use otherwise." The reality of it is that you have to stop caring about the effects of your actions at some point: all the stuff we use daily is a product of exploitation and suffering of others with a dash of ruining the planet for future generations, yet we don't have a problem looking ourselves at the mirror.

Re: Hacking Team hacked, attackers claim 400GB in dumped data

#188

Post by mirimir »

Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai at Motherboard reports evidence that PhineasFisher hacked Hacking Team.[0] It's also possible that someone else hacked both Hacking Team and PhineasFisher, of course.

[0] http://motherboard.vice.com/read/hacker-claims-responsibilit...

Re: Hacking Team hacked, attackers claim 400GB in dumped data

#190

Post by MichaelGG »

Fede_V wrote: post #91

I do not want to sound shockingly naive, but I wonder how these people can sleep at night. You've just sold software to some of the most brutal governments in the world, who will use your technology to track down and brutally torture incredibly brave human rights activists. How can you do this, and still get up in the morning while looking at yourself in the mirror? I can understand petty crime if the alternative is…

Someone's gonna do it anyways? So the choice is whether you do something and profit off it (and possibly use the money to accomplish good things) or if you let someone else do it and make the money and perhaps do bad things. Pretty easy choice for me.

In fact, I've written software to analyze VoIP networks (troubleshooting) at scale, and now I'm wondering if I can retarget that and sell to larger entities for much more money. I hadn't really though of it before, but I guess some of these shittier countries wouldn't be able to simply do the engineering themselves even if it's really not that hard.

On a separate note, we should be free to pursue scientific and engineering knowledge without having to deal with consequences of idiots that misuse such things. At least in this branch, imagine if all physicists last century had avoided furthering physics over nuclear weapons concerns. Now it's nowhere near as cool, but the challenge of indexing multiple 40G+ connections at linerate? It'll be fun at a minimum.

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