14 DAY TRIAL // Anonymous claims that blackhat hackers associated with its Antisec campaign have broken into the network of a company called Nimbuzz and stole the source code of its popular VoIP application.
The hacktivist group accuses Nimbuzz of colluding with oppressive governments to block its own VoIP services in countries like Egypt or Syria where pro-democracy activists need them.
As a warning to Nimbuzz the group released an internal document stolen from the company's website and parts of the source code to prove that it has it.
"Their [the hackers'] access to this network is best described as complete access to everything in their network including all of their source code on Nimbuzz’s svn server. The gross incompetence of the security model put in place for this server astounded even us," Anonymous said in a press release.
The group claims to have over 120 gigabytes of source code downloaded from Nimbuzz's network over several weeks, but has decided to hold onto it for now.
"We DO NOT tolerate any kind of censorship of communication. We DO NOT tolerate companies working in collusion with governments to stop the free flow of information. We WILL expose these companies to the public," Anonymous warned.
The Dutch company which creates a free call and messaging app of the same name responded by denying that it works with governments to block its own service.
"The accusation that we censor communication is not only false, but is the opposite of what we are actually doing. Our core business is mobile communication (VoiP and Chat). Why would we ever do anything to voluntarily block communications for our customers?" the company writes on its blog.
Nimbuzz points out that in countries like Syria or Egypt where its VoIP service was blocked by regulators, it tried, without success, to negotiate agreements to offer a messaging-only application.
Regarding the actual security breach and loss of confidential data, the company didn't have much to say, except that no user data was compromised.