Cyberattack hits Russian surveillance tech firm Protei

TechCrunch reports that Protei, a Russian surveillance technology provider that counts Mexico, Italy, Bahrain, and Pakistan among its clients, had its website momentarily defaced and nearly 182 GB of data pilfered following a cyberattack earlier this month.

Some publicly exposed Protei data shared with DDoSecrets revealed old emails. While details regarding their identity or motivations remain unclear, attackers have emphasized the disruption of "another DPI/SORM provider" in the defaced website, referencing Russia's primary lawful intercept system SORM that has also been used in other countries, as well as deep-packet interception devices that have enabled surveillance and censorship by determining and filtering web traffic.

Protei has yet to acknowledge the attack. Such a development comes after Protei and leading Iranian telecommunications provider Ariantel were reported by The Citizen Lab to have communicated about internet traffic logging and website blocking technologies two years ago.