The founder of Hacking Team was arrested on Saturday for stabbing a relative, as reported by multiple news outlets.
David Vincenzetti, who founded Hacking Team in 2003, was arrested after his cousin called the police because he couldn’t reach his wife when visiting Vincenzetti. Vincenzetti allegedly stabbed his cousin’s wife, who was found unconscious by the police.
When Vincenzetti appeared before the judge, he didn’t discuss the incident, but rambled about work and his companies. The judge ordered an investigation into his mental state and ordered him to be detained in jail as a precautionary measure, according to La Stampa.
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Reached by phone, a telephone operator at San Vittore prison in Milan, where Vincenzetti is reportedly being held, said they couldn’t confirm if Vincenzetti was a detainee nor allow TechCrunch to speak with any detainee.
Vincenzetti had been out of the public spotlight since 2020, declaring on LinkedIn that Hacking Team was “dead.” A year earlier, he had sold the company, which was re-branded to Memento Labs.
Hacking Team was one of the first companies to develop and sell spyware to governments, with around 40 government customers at its peak. However, security researchers found that customers like Morocco, the United Arab Emirates, and Ethiopia had used Hacking Team’s tools to target and hack journalists and dissidents.
In 2015, a hacker known as “Phineas Fisher” hacked Hacking Team and leaked thousands of the company’s internal emails and the spyware’s source code. The breach prompted key developers to leave the company and led to a decline in customers. Eventually, the company was sold to new management.