Earlier this month, Wikileaks – an international, non-profit organisation, that publishes secret information, news leaks, and classified media from anonymous sources – published some classified documents which implicate the Bayelsa State Government.
The file shows an email correspondence between a certain representative of the Bayelsa State Government and the “Hacking Team”. The Hacking Team is an Italian surveillance and malware vendor who has no qualms hacking for governments and corporate bodies. In a classic example of poetic justice, they in turn were and their data released by Wikileaks.
Part of the email reads, thus;
Dear Mr. Luppi
I got the massage you passed to me thru Ami today I will wait for your call in the next two days.
The name of the client is:
Bayelsa State Governors Office
Yanoagoa, Bayelsa State
NIGERIA
BR
Haim Lewy
Managing Director / CEO
Skylinks Satellite Communications Limited.
First Floor International House
41 The Parade
St. Helier, JE2 3QQ
Jersey, UK
Another email detailed the problems the Hacking Team were facing in hacking iPhones and problems with the network coverage in Bayelsa hindering the project.
Sir,
We have a major problem in the installation in Bayelsa, the problem is actually divided to three issues:
1. 3G problems from the Operators in Nigeria.
2. Supported devices and OS version of the solution.
3. Repeated problems with the anonymaizers.
As per the 3G problem we understand the limitation and explained the customer (as he uses the services by himself on his smart phone).
We are having a very problematic issue on the supported OS of the IPhone and Android, the new OS versions are not supported and in Nigeria our targets are usually using the most advanced Smart phones and the latest Android and Ios that our system is not supporting.
The only platform we support fully is the BlackBerry and that made us to give away few phones to some targets just to show the client it is working well.
Surprisingly, they were able to access Blackberry phones.
Searching the term “Bayelsa” on Wikileaks shows a goldmine of information concerning this massive hacking project.
