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Mollitiam Industries, a small and little-known Spanish spyware maker, is shutting down.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The startup\u2019s demise was first reported<\/a> by the intelligence and surveillance trade new website Intelligence Online, which blamed the company\u2019s downfall on financial issues. Public business records<\/a> confirm that the company filed for bankruptcy on January 23.\u00a0<\/p>\n Unlike Hacking Team<\/a>, NSO Group<\/a>, and now Paragon Solutions<\/a>, Mollitiam Industries, which is based in Toledo, a town outside of Madrid, Spain, has mostly operated out of public view. In part, secrecy is just a consequence of the nature of the spyware industry: There are a lot of vendors all over the world, and a significant amount of them don\u2019t want any publicity.\u00a0<\/p>\n Another reason why Mollitiam Industries eschews publicity may have less to do with the spyware industry itself, and more to do with the fact that the spyware startup was based in Spain, which doesn\u2019t get a lot of attention from international English-language media outlets, and also because Mollitiam Industries was only ever known to be involved in one scandal in Colombia, another place that can be be underreported in the English-speaking world.\u00a0<\/p>\n At the time of writing, Mollitiam Industries\u2019 official website<\/a> is still online. The company did not respond to a request for comment sent to an email address listed on the site. When TechCrunch called a phone number listed on the company\u2019s Google Maps listing, the line was busy. According to its official LinkedIn account<\/a>, Mollitiam Industries had between 11 and 50 employees.\u00a0<\/p>\n In 2021, Mollitiam Industries first caught the attention of English-speaking media. Wired reported at the time<\/a> that a brochure unintentionally left online by a third party showed the startup developed spyware products called Invisible Man and Night Crawler, which were designed to surreptitiously extract data from target devices, including from messaging apps like Telegram and WhatsApp, activate the device\u2019s cameras and microphone, steal passwords, and log keystrokes.\u00a0<\/p>\n The year prior, in 2020, Colombian news magazine Semana reported<\/a> that its journalists and its offices had been under physical and digital surveillance by the country\u2019s military intelligence agency, whose agents reportedly intimidated the journalists with threats that included sending them tombstones. The surveillance and intimidation campaign came after the magazine had published investigations into alleged wrongdoing by officers in the military in 2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cA cyber-intelligence colonel offered me 50 million pesos [around $15,000 at the time] to introduce a malware (virus) in the computers of Semana journalists and thus be able to access the information,\u201d a source told the magazine.<\/p>\n \t\t\tDo you have more information about Mollitiam Industries, or other spyware makers? From a non-work device and network, you can contact Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai securely on Signal at +1 917 257 1382, or via Telegram and Keybase @lorenzofb, or email<\/a>.<\/a> You also can contact TechCrunch via SecureDrop<\/a>.\t\t<\/div>\n That malware was apparently developed by Mollitiam Industries, according to a photo of a contract<\/a> between the National Army of Colombia (Ej\u00e9rcito Nacional de Colombia) and Mollitiam Industries.\u00a0<\/p>\n The document showed the military agency made an offer of nearly 3 billion pesos (around $900,000 at the time) to acquire a system called \u201cHombre Invisible\u201d (or Invisible Man). The software was allegedly capable of infecting macOS and Windows devices both remotely, by hiding inside Office documents, and via USB drive. The malware could also bypass antivirus software, and allow the military officers to infect an \u201cunlimited\u201d number of active targets.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThis tool allows us to do everything: get into any computer, access WhatsApp and Telegram Web calls and conversations, download archived or deleted chat conversations, photos and in general whatever is stored in the memory of the infected machine,\u201d an anonymous source told Semana.\u00a0<\/p>\n The same year as the Colombia scandal, Mollitiam Industries gave an online talk<\/a> through ISS World, a series of conferences for companies that want to sell products to law enforcement and intelligence agencies.\u00a0<\/p>\n The company wrote in the talk\u2019s description that end-to-end encryption was making it more difficult to eavesdrop on intended individuals, and referred to the need to use malware to compromise the target\u2019s device in order to access their communications. According to the description<\/a>, \u201cMollitiam will explain the roots of this approach through software demonstrations, and will share innovative features such as the recordings of WhatsApp VoIP calls.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Mollitiam Industries was active at least until the end of 2023, according to Meta. In early 2024, Meta said in a report<\/a> that it had removed a network of fake accounts on Facebook and Instagram that was linked to Mollitiam Industries.<\/p>\n \u201cMollitiam Industries and its customers ran fake accounts which they used for testing malicious capabilities among their own accounts and scraping public information. Similar to other surveillance-for-hire firms, they used IP-logging links aimed at tracing their targets\u2019 IP addresses,\u201d read the report. \u201cThey also engaged in phishing and social engineering targeted primarily at people in Spain, Colombia and Peru, including the political opposition, journalists, anti-corruption activists and activists against police abuse.\u201d<\/p>\nContact Us<\/h4>\n