Leaked Hacking Video Shows Government Spyware in Action
Have you ever wondered how government spyware really works? A new 10-minute video from Motherboard shows an Italian surveillance contractor called RCS Lab demoing a hacking tool like the ones used by police forces and government agencies. It also shows that cops need very little technical knowledge to extract a frighteningly large amount of information from a target's computer.
The video shows a software product from Italian company RCS Labs called Mito3, which allows an RCS employee to create these types of attacks with ease, simply by applying a rule to the software’s settings. The RCS website describes this product as a “control center” that “retrieves, decodes, processes, and stores content originating from almost any type of communication network.”
The RCS worker can select a website they want to use as a carrier, click on a drop-down menu and select “inject HTML” into an innocent website. This then creates a malicious popup that forces the victim to download an updated version of Flash. From there, the computer is hacked, while a fake update appears to take place on the screen to appease the user. Once the user downloads the fake update, they are infected with spyware.
“This whole installation process is actually completely fake,” the RCS Lab employee says in the video. “Because in fact, at this point, it’s already infected.”
Mito3 allows a user to easily hack into a victim's computer and gain access to the screen, messages, voice calls, video calls, social media activities, chats, microphone, camera, and even GPS location. It even provides automatic transcription of the recordings, according to Motherboard.
While the demo in the video doesn't show any amazing hacking capabilities, it's the simple user interface and the speed at which it's done that's impressive. The video also gives us a glimpse into how surveillance vendors attempt to sell their malware to governments around the world.
