Meet Hacking Team, the company that helps the police hack you

Citizen Lab Technical Advisor Morgan Marquis-Boire was interviewed in an article published in the Verge on 13 September.

The article looks at the Milan-based company Hacking Team, which develops commercial hacking software. The Citizen Lab has done extensive research on the market for state-sponsored hacking tools as well as filtering and surveillance technologies made by Western companies. This research includes reports on Hacking Team.

Hacking Team’s flagship product enables police to collect more data than the National Security Agency.

“You’re actually getting a commercially developed product. “That’s actually what makes it different from the sort of backdoors that hackers were using sort of for the lulz, like 18 years ago when I was opening my flatmate’s CD-ROM drive to freak him out,” said Marquis-Boire.