Company Sends Bogus Copyright Takedown Over Hacking Team Docs
from the good-luck-with-that-strategy dept
We’ve already written about the hack and leak of the Hacking Team and all its emails and files. There are likely to be tons of stories coming out from that hack over the next few days and weeks as people go through everything. However, it appears that someone is at least making a pretty ridiculous and half-hearted attempt to stuff that genie back in the bottle. Security consultant Mustafa Al-Bassam noted on Twitter that he received a copyright takedown notice for his mirror of the files from a different company, Lexsi.
I just got a DMCA complaint from one of Hacking Team's clients (@lexsi). pic.twitter.com/uoLTQySreI
— Mustafa Al-Bassam (@musalbas) July 6, 2015
Hello,
We have just identified that the website musalbas.com/ displays sensitive and confidential information.
We would be grateful if you transmit the identify of the hosting provider in order to retrieve the sensitve documents.
Please confirm the reception of our request by responding to this email.
Thank you in advance for your help and feel free to contact us should you need more information.
At first Al-Bassam thinks that Lexsi must be a Hacking Team client, but then notes that there’s no listing of Lexsi in the documents (which include customer rolls). It’s possible that the client relationship runs the other way. Lexsi claims it does “cybercrime mitigation,” so it’s possible that Hacking Team (or others?) hired the company to try to bury the Hacking Team documents — though that seems like an unenviable, if Sisyphean, task. Either way, whatever Lexsi was thinking here, it seems unlikely to have the desired impact.
Filed Under: copyright, france, hacking team, mustafa al-bassam, takedown
Companies: hacking team, lexsi
Comments on “Company Sends Bogus Copyright Takedown Over Hacking Team Docs”
That reads more like a general spam email. In fact, I bet my gmail spam filter would have sent it directly to trash. Not to mention that because of situations exactly like that, you can’t just contact someone through email for something like that.
Nothing like drawing even more attention to something you want to hide… streisand effect in full form!
BTW.. Bonus points for using the word Sisyphean in a sentence..I had to look that one up. Actually, I’ve had to look up a few words over the last few weeks, you guys got some kind of uncommon word contest going on?
Copyright takedown?
Maybe I’m missing something, but this doesn’t looks to me like a copyright takedown request, least of all DMCA complaint.
Re: Copyright takedown?
Maybe I’m missing something, but this doesn’t looks to me like a copyright takedown request, least of all DMCA complaint.
It lists the “copyright holder” in the headers. It’s not a “DMCA” takedown because it’s in France and they don’t have the DMCA in France. However, it is a copyright claim.
A Sisyphean task isn’t so unenviable if you get paid by the hour 😉
Re: Re:
I’d still be happier doing some more useful than pushing heavy boulders uphill that roll down immediately anyway.
Is that really a DCMA notice?
That doesn’t really look like a DCMA notice to me. A lot of the “header” stuff could just be from the Contact form of the site or something. It doesn’t look like a request to take down so much as to get more information.
Rule #1
Hacking Team (Lexsi) has seemed to have forgotten Rule #1 of the Internet – the Internet never forgets! Take it down, but it will pop right back up, and 1000x more!
Something Fishy This Way Comes
Is there some way that the lawyers can somehow make the “content” of the documents “unfit for court use”, by convincing the law to let them claim copyright on the lot?
While most people fall back on their civilian training and assume the move to be one of gross incompetence, I have to think that there has to be some nefarious purpose behind this move and methinks that this is their real purpose.
Somehow they will try and make the use of these documents to incriminate them impossible, by claiming they were stolen property and cannot be used against the owners.
Dunno how, but I smell a Tuna in the making.
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