A Russian telecom firm that develops expertise to permit cellphone and web corporations to conduct internet surveillance and censorship was hacked, had its web site defaced, and had knowledge stolen from its servers, TechCrunch has realized.
Based in Russia, Protei makes telecommunications methods for cellphone and web suppliers throughout dozens of nations, together with Bahrain, Italy, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Pakistan and far of central Africa. The corporate, now headquartered in Jordan, sells video conferencing expertise and web connectivity options, in addition to surveillance tools and web-filtering merchandise, comparable to deep packet inspection methods.
It’s not clear precisely when or how Protei was hacked, however a duplicate of the corporate’s web site saved on the Web Archive’s Wayback Machine reveals it was defaced on November 8. The web site was restored quickly after.
Throughout the breach, the hacker obtained the contents of Protei’s internet server — round 182 gigabytes of recordsdata — together with emails relationship again years.
A replica of Protei’s knowledge was supplied to DDoSecrets, a non-profit transparency collective that indexes leaked datasets within the public curiosity, together with knowledge from legislation enforcement, authorities businesses, and firms concerned within the surveillance business.
Mohammad Jalal, the managing director of Protei’s department in Jordan, didn’t reply to a request for remark in regards to the breach.
The identification of the hacker shouldn’t be recognized, nor their motivations, however the defaced web site learn: “one other DPI/SORM supplier bites the mud.” The message possible references the corporate’s gross sales of deep packet inspection methods and different web filtering expertise for the Russian-developed lawful intercept system referred to as SORM.
SORM is the primary lawful intercept system used throughout Russia in addition to a number of different international locations which use Russian expertise. Cellphone and web suppliers set up SORM tools on their networks, which permits their nation’s governments to acquire the contents of calls, textual content messages and internet searching knowledge of the networks’ clients.
Deep-packet inspection units permit telecom corporations to determine and filter internet visitors relying on its supply, comparable to a social media web site or a selected messaging app, and selectively block entry. These methods are used for surveillance and censorship in areas the place freedom of speech and expression are restricted.
Citizen Lab reported in 2023 that Iranian telecoms big Ariantel had consulted with Protei about expertise for logging web visitors and blocking entry to sure web sites. Paperwork seen and printed by Citizen Lab present that Protei touted its expertise’s skill to limit or block entry to web sites for particular individuals or whole swathes of the inhabitants.
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