14 DAY TRIAL // Hacking Team, the Italian company that provided hacking tools for enterprises and governments alike, has made its official comeback with an email sent to its customers via its internal mailing list.
The revelation comes from Vice reporters, who were alerted of a new email that the company's CEO, David Vincenzetti, sent to current and potential customers via Hacking Team's mailing list.
A short snippet of the email says, "Most [law enforcement agencies] in the US and abroad will become 'blind,' they will 'go dark': they will be simply be [sic] unable to fight vicious phenomena such as terrorism. Only the private companies can help here, we are one of them."
The email then continues, "It is crystal clear that the present American administration does not have the stomach to oppose the American IT conglomerates and to approve unpopular, yet totally necessary regulations."
This email was sent out on October 19, almost four months after a hacker only known as PhineasFisher breached the company's servers, stole and then dumped over 400 GB of data.
Is this Remote Control System version 10?
The 400 GB of files contained a slew of zero-day exploits in various applications, complex spyware and surveillance tools, hacking (intrusion) tools, internal company emails, a list of customers and their purchases, and the source code of the company's main product: Remote Control System (RCS) version 9.
After the hack happened, the company's CEO vowed to make a return, and during the appearances he made at various conferences over the summer, he announced that his team had already started work on RCS 10.
It is unclear if the email sent out a few days ago is referring to RCS 10 or something new completely.
One thing is clear, and that's the fact that the new tools will provide the ability for governments and companies to crack encrypted files and Web traffic, a problem that many governments like the US and the UK are trying to get around in one way or another.