JAKARTA - A number of hacking tools produced by an Italian company were used to spy on Apple Inc and Android smartphones in Italy and Kazakhstan. This statement came from Alphabet Inc's Google in a report on Thursday, June 23.
According to the report, Milan-based RCS Lab has been developing tools to spy on private messages and contacts from targeted devices. On the company's website, they claim European law enforcement agencies as one of their clients.
Google's findings at RCS Lab come as European and American regulators consider potential new rules regarding the sale and import of spyware.
"These vendors enable the proliferation of malicious hacking tools and arm governments that would not be able to develop these capabilities domestically," Google said on its blog.
Meanwhile, Apple and the governments of Italy and Kazakhstan did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the report.
RCS Lab says its products and services comply with European regulations. They also claim to have helped law enforcement agencies investigate crimes.
"RCS Lab personnel were not exposed to, or participated in, any activity undertaken by the customer concerned," RCS Lab told Reuters in an email message. They also added that it condemned the misuse of its products.
Google said it had taken steps to protect users of the Android operating system and warned them about the spyware.
Today, the global industry making spyware for governments has grown, with more and more companies developing interception tools for law enforcement organizations. Anti-surveillance activists allege that they are assisting the government, which in some cases, is using the tool to crack down on human rights and civil rights.
The industry came under global scrutiny when the Pegasus spyware, created by Israeli surveillance firm NSO Group, was in recent years found to have been used by multiple governments to spy on journalists, activists and dissidents.
According to Bill Marczak, security researcher with digital watchdog Citizen Lab, while the RCS Lab tool may not be as secret as Pegasus, it can still read messages and view passwords.
"This shows that even though these devices are ubiquitous, there is still a long way to go to secure them from this powerful attack," he added.
On its website, RCS Lab describes itself as a maker of "legitimate interception" technologies and services including voice, data collection and "tracking systems". They claim to have 10,000 targets intercepted daily in Europe alone.
Google researchers found that RCS Lab had previously collaborated with Hacking Team, the controversial Italian spy firm. The firm has also created surveillance software for foreign governments to tap phones and computers.
Hacking Team, went bankrupt after falling victim to a major hack in 2015 which led to the disclosure of many internal documents.
Billy Leonard, a senior researcher at Google, in some cases, Google said they believed the hackers who used the RCS spyware were working with the targeted internet service providers, indicating they had links to government-backed actors.
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