Hacking team and Boeing Built a Surveillance Drone

The hack of Hacking team was hilarious but serious at the same time, to contemplate a freelance company hell-bent on hacking any target for a variety of employers seemed, well not surprising, but certainly a disappointing period for the ideological view of democracy. But at least the Italian surveillance team only hacked computers, I mean it’s not like they were developing any weaponry… oh my god they planned a Drone!

According to the released emails which became public thanks to Wikileaks, the firm have been planning for just over a year to develop a drone by the name of ‘Snoopy” which was capable of intercepting data from users smartphones through spoofed wireless networks. The emails also reveal that both Boeing and Hacking Team want unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVS) with the aim to carry out attacks which inject spyware into target computers or mobile phones via Wi-Fi.

The plans also reveal that public Wi-Fi networks would also be used to intercept targets internet traffic before injecting malicious code into said machine, with the aim of installing spyware which was developed by Hacking team. This news is also accompanied by techniques which makes use of “man in the middle attacks” and exploits to fish for information.

Well, I am not sure I particularly want surveillance drones which have the ability to spy on computers belonging to anyone. This news also highlights the line which blurs the view of good and evil, if governments were contemplating this concept, how does this make them any better than criminals? Yes, it’s technically for a noble cause by catching alleged targets, but who are the targets? This also goes back to the same question of transparently, governments quite happily inform us that money is tight for essential facilities for example hospitals, yet could well have been planning to purchase eyes in the sky which intercepts data at taxpayers expense.

Thank You The Hacker News and Wkileaks for providing us with this fascinating information