Italian surveillance company Hacking Team says that it has lost control of its custom-built spy software, unleashing a new threat on to the internet and depriving the company of its top selling point.
Hacking Team said on Wednesday it believed anyone could now deploy its RCS software "against any target of their choice".
"We believe this is an extremely dangerous situation," the company said.
Hacking Team's statement is confirmation that its program's source code was in the mountain of data pilfered when the company was breached on Sunday night.
That means that the program - once limited to paying customers - is available to just about anyone who can pick it up and knows how to use it.
Although all malicious programs are potentially dangerous, the bigger threat is likely to be to Hacking Team itself.
Its once-secret program was the centrepiece of surveillance packages that could fetch hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Anti-virus firms could now easily pick up on the program, forcing "virtually all" of Hacking Team's clients to suspend their operations, the company said.
Meanwhile, software maker Adobe Systems says it is hoping to fix a critical flaw in its Flash Player program that was revealed when RCS became public.
A patch is expected later on Wednesday.
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