The hacker who developed parts of the controversial spyware recently exposed by Wikileaks has been creating “protective” technology from a small office in Valletta to protect internet users from surveillance.

Alberto Pelliccione, 32, was once the senior developer for the Google Android version of the controversial Hacking Team software, Galileo.

Speaking from his home in Sliema, he told The Sunday Times of Malta he had left the Milan-based company to develop anti-snoop products in Malta.

“I used to work on offensive products for Hacking Team. Now I am producing something which protects users, whoever these may be, from sophisticated and invasive attacks,” he said.

Hacking Team was catapulted into the national spotlight last week, after a series of leaked e-mails, uploaded on Wikileaks, contained correspondence with several intelligence agencies, including the Malta Secret Service.

The e-mails described how two Maltese operatives had met representatives from the company last month in Prague over a potential €600,000 agreement to purchase its spy technology.

I didn’t want to work like this anymore

Listed as an ‘enemy of the internet’ by Reporters without Borders, the firm ultimately did not sell their products to the Maltese government and a Home Affairs Ministry spokeswoman said talks with the firm had stopped in Prague.

The leaked e-mails give a clear idea of the sort of clientele kept by the Italian firm, which just last month gave a demonstration at the headquarters of a notorious paramilitary security agency recently labelled a “death squad” by Human Rights Watch.

Meanwhile back in Malta, Mr Pelliccione gave this newspaper a rare insight into the inner workings of the nefarious Hacking Team.

“It became very compartmentalised. We didn’t even know what our colleagues were working on. Sometimes we didn’t even know who the customers were. I decided I didn’t want to work like this anymore,” he said. Instead, Mr Pelliccione joined forces with two other Hacking Team colleagues to set up his Maltese company, ReaQta.

According to its website, ReaQta uses artificial intelligence and malware analysis to block threats including those posed by the Hacking Team products.

Mr Pelliccione said that while he had left on good terms, he was now in hot water with his former employers.

Reacting to international media reports that he was one of six ex-employees who were being investigated over claims that they stole Hacking Team’s intellectual property, Mr Pelliccione said he had nothing to hide.

“I have not received official correspondence that I am facing legal action. But these allegations are simply not true,” he said.

Mr Pelliccione said his software did not single out the codes used by his previous employer – which he had helped create – but protected against a vast range of invasive software.

“What they are implying is that we stole the source code to create this programme. But the two technologies are totally different. One is an offensive solution and the other is a protection solution. Even on a technical level they cannot be compared in anyway,” he said, adding that his codes were open source and anyone could have a look for themselves.

‘We’re the good guys’

Hacking Team has spoken out over the mass e-mail leak that saw 400GB of its data exposed on the internet, insisting: “We’re the good guys”.

David Vincenzetti, 47, who founded of the spyware company, told Italian newspaper La Stampa the company had sold its hacking software to several oppressive regimes including Ethiopia, as exposed by the company’s e-mail archive.

“We do not trade in weapons we do not sell guns,” he said, adding that without regular updates his software was rapidly blocked by cyber security counter measures.

In the case of the Ethiopian government, which used Hacking Team tools to spy on journalists and activists, Mr Vincenzetti said: “We’re the good guys… when we heard that our software had been used in this way, we asked about this, and finally decided to stop supplying them.”

Mr Vincenzetti believes the cyber attack on his company could have only been organised “at the governmental level”.

“This is not an impromptu initiative: the attack was planned for months, with significant resources, the extraction of data took a long time,” he said.