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Senain bought spy packages from Hacking Team for 3 years
Posted On 27 Mar 2018
Ecuadornews:
While developers suspect that the Hacking Team (HT) spy program is still working, the National Secretariat of Intelligence of Ecuador (Senain) has not confirmed whether or not it terminated its relationship with this Italian company.
EL UNIVERSO has requested an interview with the Senain since last week, but it has not been accepted.
A government source assured EL UNIVERSO that the decision of President Lenin Moreno to announce the disappearance of the Senain was due to the results of the first report presented by its current owner, Jorge Costa, on Monday, March 19. Costa’s investigation is ongoing, he added.
See also: Deletion of entities, in policies of the Government of Ecuador
According to the only three documents of the leaked contract, the Senain acquired licenses to use Hacking Team’s Remote Control System.
The purchase was for three years with a total of 30 packages to infect and monitor computers with Windows and MacOS programs, as well as Android, iPhone, BlackBerry and Symbian phones. Vectors were included to infect the equipment physically and remotely, in addition to the maintenance and updating of the program.
The business involved training in Italy for four agents, while the Colombian company Robotec provided support services in Quito and basic intelligence analysis training for twelve people. Robotec has not answered an interview request made by EL UNIVERSO.
In early March, the website WeLiveSecurity a message alerting the spy program HT continues to evolve, possibly by changes made by its creators and would be present in fourteen countries article was published.
The article did not reveal all the clues, as the author still studies the variants of the code.
While it was hit by the hacking of its emails in July 2015, HT has not closed its doors. It sold 20% of its shares to Cypriot Tablem Limited, which would be related to Saudi Arabia.
In an interview two years ago, Vincenzetti described his spy program as “black magic”: he can intercept everything and decrypt everything. For the computer expirata now turned into an entrepreneur, national security is the most important. That is why it offers its program to the governments of Italy, Spain or the United States. His problems began when the program was sold to countries that used it to spy on activists or political opponents, such as Morocco or Sudan. That is why it has been denounced by human rights organizations. The publication of HT’s emails revealed that the list of clients included Ethiopia, Egypt, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Panama, Mexico and Ecuador.
In that interview, the Italian said that Morocco is still his client. When the journalist asked him if, thanks to the hacking of his emails, HT had improved his products, Vincenzetti’s response was an embarrassed smile. (I)
