DEA spends your tax dollars on zero-day exploits!

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The Drug Enforcement Administration is in the hacking business. Newly released documents show the DEA spent $575,000 buying access to weaponized zero-day exploits sold by Hacking Team.

Hacking Team is known for providing hacking tools to government agencies. But it's not clear whether the DEA tried to take advantage of any zero-day exploits, and the agency implied it was not particularly successful with Hacking Team's solution.

Hacking Team notes that its Exploit Portal, which the DEA paid $575,000 for full access to, as noted above on page 89 of the 2012 invoice, contains at least three zero-day level exploits.

The DEA initiated payment for access to Cicom USA's hacking tools on August 20, 2012. Since 2012, the DEA has sporadically paid out a number of different invoices to Cicom USA.

But it's not clear whether the DEA tried to take advantage of any zero-day exploits, and the agency implied it was not particularly successful with Hacking Team's solution. Since 2012, the DEA deployed RCS on 17 targets, with only "one successful instance of remote deployment.