Hacking Team
![The words Hacking Team enclosed with in reversed square brackets ][](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hacking_Team_logo.png){kind=logo}
Company logo
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| Industry | Information technology |
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| Founded | 2003 |
| Founders | David Vincenzetti, Valeriano Bedeschi |
| Headquarters | Milan, Italy |
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Key people
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Alberto Ornaghi (ALoR), Marco Valleri (NaGA) |
| Products |
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| Website | www |
HackingTeam is a Milan-based information technology company that sells offensive intrusion and surveillance capabilities to governments, law enforcement agencies and corporations. Its "Remote Control Systems" enable governments and corporations to monitor the communications of internet users, decipher their encrypted files and emails, record Skype and other Voice over IP communications, and remotely activate microphones and camera on target computers. The company has been criticized for providing these capabilities to governments with poor human rights records, though HackingTeam states that they have the ability to disable their software if it is used unethically. The Italian government has restricted their license to do business with countries outside Europe.
HackingTeam employs around 40 people in its Italian office, and has subsidiary branches in Annapolis, Washington, D.C. and Singapore. Its products are in use in dozens of countries across six continents.
HackingTeam was started by two Italian programmers: Alberto Ornaghi and Marco Valleri. Prior to the company's formal establishment, Ornaghi and Valleri (under the aliases of ALoR, and NaGA respectively), created a set of tools that could be used to monitor and remotely manipulate target computers. The program, called Ettercap, was embraced both by hackers looking to spy on people, and by companies that hoped to test the security of their own networks.
The Milan police department learned of the tools. Hoping to use Ettercap to spy on Italian citizens and listen to their Skype calls, the police contacted Ornaghi and Valleri and asked them to help modify the program. HackingTeam was born, and became "the first sellers of commercial hacking software to the police."
According to former employee Alberto Pelliccione, the company began as security services provider, offering penetration testing, auditing and other defensive capabilities to clients. Pelliccione states that as malware and other offensive capabilities were developed and accounted for a larger percentage of revenues, the organization pivoted in a more offensive direction and became increasingly compartmentalized. Pelliccione claims fellow employees working on aspects of the same platform – for example, Android exploits and payloads – would not communicate with one another, possibly leading to tensions and strife within the organization.
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Wikipedia