Italy’s surveillance software maker Hacking Team hacked

Italy's Hacking Team, which makes surveillance software used by governments to tap into phones and computers, fell victim to hacking on a grand scale on Monday, Reuters reported.

The controversial Milan-based company, which calls itself a maker of lawful interception software used by police and intelligence services worldwide, had faced accusation by anti-surveillance campaigners of selling snooping tools to governments with poor human rights records.

The team's Twitter account was hijacked on Monday and used by hackers to release what was alleged to be over 400 gigabytes of the company's internal documents, email correspondence, employee passwords and the underlying source code of its products.