The CEO of Hacking Team, the Italian company that sold hacking software to South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS), said that the company had refused to do business with North Korea.
“There are a number of countries we have rejected as clients. Some are obvious such as North Korea, Syria or Iran,” said David Vincenzetti, founder of Hacking Team and its current CEO, in an interview with American technology and economy publication Business Insider on July 24. Vincenzetti was responding to the question, “If it’s not illegal, are there any groups or countries you absolutely will not sell your services to?”
His response could mean that North Korea contacted the company to purchase a hacking program, but the company refused to work with it.
After Hacking Team was hacked on July 6, its internal data was made public, revealing that the company had sold hacking programs to countries with poor human rights records. This earned the company severe criticism from human rights organizations. But the company has denied these charges, claiming that it only provided its services to legal criminal justice organizations.
On July 14, Vincenzetti told local media in Italy that the company would stay in business despite the data leak, and he reiterated these plans during the interview on Friday.
“We will continue to develop a new version of our software based on work that our engineers were doing before the attack and that was not compromised,” he said.
By Kwon Oh-sung, staff reporter
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