Yes, Cellebrite Hacked: In an unusual case of hackers becoming victims, an anonymous hacker breached a popular mobile hacking service Appliances known for providing surveillance and data mining solutions to government agencies.
The Motherboard reports that the attacker managed to obtain 900GB data from Israeli company Cellebrite, including customer credentials, databases and technical data of the company's products.
Cellebrite has developed the Universal Forensic Extraction Device (UFED), which has the ability to receive data from a wide range of smartphones. Once connected, the UFED can retrieve multiple data, such as SMS, e-mail, and call logs.
The Israeli company is supposed to supply government agencies in the United States and the authoritarian regimes of Russia, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey.
Motherboard has confirmed that the stolen data is indeed authentic. According to the publication, the information appears to have been retrieved from the customer section of Cellebrite's website, where the users they can access new software updates.
In addition to user passwords and databases, the breach allegedly includes logs from devices that Cellebrite "broke" as well as evidence files from confiscated mobile devices.
The company has since confirmed the violation on its website and advised its customers to change their code:
"Cellebrite recently experienced unauthorized access to an external server. The company is conducting an investigation to determine the extent of the breach.
Currently, the leaked information is known to include basic contact information of users who have signed up for notifications or notifications about Cellebrite products and hashed passwords for users who have not yet been migrated to the new system. To date, the company is not aware of any specific increased risk to its customers as a result of this event. However, my.Cellebrite account holders are asked to change their passwords as a precaution.”
In a similar case since last year, PhineasFisher hacker violated two surveillance services involved in providing hacking applications designed for espionage to unsuspecting citizens in various government agencies.
PhineasFisher then leaked the stolen data to Internet, while the Cellebrite attacker is reportedly taking a more cautious approach, giving the information only to Motherboard and a select few people in IRC chat rooms.
