Hacking Team hackingteam.com Hacking Team data breach: what happened and what to do
Reviewed by Anthon Wansland
Head of Product & Co-Founder
Serus is a privacy company with paid tools to find and remove your personal data. This page is free and based on official sources.
In July 2015 the Italian surveillance software firm Hacking Team was hacked and over 400GB of its data was posted online. Have I Been Pwned indexes 32,310 accounts from the email archives, exposing email addresses and email messages.
View all 13,118 breaches- Breach date
- 6 Jul 2015
- Affected
- 32,310
- Data exposed
- Email addresses, Email messages
- Verified
- Yes
- Last updated
Source: Have I Been Pwned (CC BY 4.0)
What happened
Hacking Team was an Italian company that sold surveillance software to governments and police. In early July 2015 attackers published more than 400GB of its internal data, including emails, files and source code, through a torrent link posted from the company's compromised Twitter account. Have I Been Pwned dates it to 6 July 2015.
The company suggested a government might be behind the attack. Reporting at the time noted that the documents named customers in several countries and drew attention to how the software was sold.
Sources checked: haveibeenpwned.com, cyberlaw.ccdcoe.org, krebsonsecurity.com
Last verified against the official page:
What was exposed
Have I Been Pwned only indexes part of it: about 189GB of mail folders, covering 32,310 accounts. The data types are email addresses and email messages. Most people in the data are employees, clients and correspondents of the company, not consumers.
What it means for you
If your address appears, the main risk is exposure of old correspondence: what you wrote, to whom, and when. That can be used for targeted phishing or pressure. Passwords weren't part of what Have I Been Pwned lists.
The messages were copied widely long ago and can't be pulled back. Look at what you wrote then and treat anything still sensitive as known.
What to do if you were in it
- 1
Think through what was in your old emails
If your address is listed, consider what you sent or received on that account in 2015: contracts, contact details, accounts. Change anything still in use that was mentioned.
- 2
Expect phishing that uses these details
Criminals can use leaked email addresses and correspondence to write messages that look personal. Don't click links in unexpected emails or texts. Go to the company's site yourself.
- 3
Turn on two-factor login for that email account
If you still use the address, protect it with an authenticator app or passkey. An email account unlocks password resets everywhere else.
- 4
Check whether your email or phone is in this and other breaches
Run a free Serus scan. Serus monitors breach databases and the dark web for your email, phone number and other details and alerts you when they show up in a new leak.
Timeline
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The breach happened
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Added to Have I Been Pwned
Frequently asked
Was I affected by the Hacking Team breach?
Only if your email address was in the mail folders Have I Been Pwned indexed. Search it there or run a free Serus scan.
What was exposed?
Email addresses and the contents of email messages, per Have I Been Pwned. The wider leak also included files and source code.
Should I change my password?
Passwords weren't listed for this breach. Change yours if the same address is still in use and you haven't updated it in years.
Sources
- Have I Been Pwned: HackingTeam
- Have I Been Pwned: Hacking Team Data Breach · haveibeenpwned.com
- Checking your connection... · cyberlaw.ccdcoe.org
- Carabinieri – Krebs on Security · krebsonsecurity.com
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