The Albanian government considered buying software from The Hacking Team, a competitor to NSO Group who have made global headlines over allegations they hacked journalists, politicians, and activists on behalf of global governments.
According to leaked emails via the Wikileaks database, the Albanian government held at least two meetings in Tirana with The Hacking Group.
The correspondence between the Albanian government and The Hacking Team began shortly after Prime Minister Edi Rama came to power in 2013.
Leaked emails show that the company discussed meetings and the demo with a contact called Altin Hoxha. It’s not clear which department he worked for.
Hoxha told them: “This system is really what we are looking to implement.” He noted that they were coming to the end of the budget year but that they hoped they could implement it in 2014 as long as “negotiations about options, functions, usage, prices, guarantees, and training” could be given.
This was for a system called Galileo. The Hacking Company described it as a “remote control system designed to attack, infect, and monitor a huge number of target PDs and smartphones in a stealth way.”
They added that the devices could monitor Windows, Linux, Mac, iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Windows Phone and more. The software would enable them to gather information such as Skype data, chat history from Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Viber, keystrokes, files, screenshots, camera snapshots, and to eavesdrop on microphones.
The company was also in contact with a man called Ermal Dautaj, believed to be working for the State Intelligence Services. In one email, Dautaj suggests setting up a meeting with “the Minister or with other people (you know who I am talking about)”.
Representatives from the company gave demos of the software in February and possibly November of 2014. The Albanian government said they were interested in the software but that it would have to be factored into the next year’s budget.
When discussing the matter internally, an account manager from The Hacking Team, Emad Shehata said:
He added: “they are very interested and have not yet found a supplier. Us being Italians are historically very close to the Albania state, the customer would be very interested in working with us.”
The government was asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement wiht the company in 2014.
The emails show that account manager Alex Velasco was hoping to meet the Head of the Drugs Sector, the Head of the Department against Organized Crime, and the Minister of the Interior back in 2012. It’s not clear if any communication was established or any meetings took place.
It seems that the deal didn’t go through as in 2015, The Hacking Team reached out to Hoxha and offered another meeting in Tirana. No further email correspondence was included in the leaks.
