Surveillance tech provider Protei was hacked, its data stolen and its website defaced

A Russian telecom institution that develops exertion to let telephone and net companies to behaviour web surveillance and censorship was hacked, had its website defaced, and had information stolen from its servers, TechCrunch has learned.

Founded successful Russia, Protei makes telecommunications systems for telephone and net providers crossed dozens of countries, including Bahrain, Italy, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Pakistan and overmuch of cardinal Africa. The company, present headquartered successful Jordan, sells video conferencing exertion and net connectivity solutions, arsenic good arsenic surveillance instrumentality and web-filtering products, specified arsenic heavy packet inspection systems.

It’s not wide precisely erstwhile oregon however Protei was hacked, but a copy of the company’s website saved connected the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine shows it was defaced connected November 8. The website was restored soon after.

During the breach, the hacker obtained the contents of Protei’s web server — astir 182 gigabytes of files — including emails dating backmost years.

A transcript of Protei’s information was provided to DDoSecrets, a non-profit transparency corporate that indexes leaked datasets successful the nationalist interest, including information from instrumentality enforcement, authorities agencies, and companies progressive successful the surveillance industry.

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Mohammad Jalal, the managing manager of Protei’s subdivision successful Jordan, did not respond to a petition for remark astir the breach. 

The individuality of the hacker is not known, nor their motivations, but the defaced website read: “another DPI/SORM supplier bites the dust.” The connection apt references the company’s income of heavy packet inspection systems and different net filtering exertion for the Russian-developed lawful intercept strategy known arsenic SORM.

SORM is the main lawful intercept strategy utilized crossed Russia arsenic good arsenic several different countries which usage Russian technology. Phone and net providers instal SORM instrumentality connected their networks, which allows their country’s governments to get the contents of calls, substance messages and web browsing information of the networks’ customers. 

Deep-packet inspection devices let telecom companies to place and filter web postulation depending connected its source, specified arsenic a societal media website oregon a circumstantial messaging app, and selectively artifact access. These systems are utilized for surveillance and censorship successful regions wherever state of code and look are limited.

Citizen Lab reported successful 2023 that Iranian telecoms elephantine Ariantel had consulted with Protei astir exertion for logging net postulation and blocking entree to definite websites. Documents seen and published by Citizen Lab amusement that Protei touted its technology’s quality to restrict oregon artifact entree to websites for circumstantial radical oregon full swathes of the population.