Judge Rules Against Company that Allegedly Sold “Hacked” Code to CIA

A small Massachusetts tech company scored a significant victory in court recently in a lawsuit in which the CIA has been accused of purchasing pirated software code for its Predator Drone program.

A judge in Suffolk County Superior Court in Boston ruled that a breach-of-contract claim filed against the company, Intelligent Integration Systems Inc., or IISI, by Marlborough, Mass-based computer maker Netezza Corp. should be dismissed.

IISI argues in the litigatoin that, per a contract agreement between the two companies, it was not required to develop a new version of its software to operate on Netezza’s latest hardware product, dubbed the TwinFin — unveiled publicly in 2009.

Netezza claimed otherwise and allegedly, according to IISI’s pleadings for summary judgment in the case, unilaterally cancelled its contract with ISSI and also “hacked” ISSI’s software source code “and created a version ... that ran on the TwinFin, though very imperfectly, which it delivered to the CIA in October 2009, and which the CIA accepted.”

Netezza, according to the lawsuit, allegedly sold the TwinFin with the faulty pirated software to the CIA for use in the agency’s Predator Drone program, which utilizes unmanned aircraft to target and kill people in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The judge’s ruling states it was, in fact, Netezza that improperly terminated its contract with IISI. In addition, the judge ruled that IISI was not required to develop new software for Netezza's TwinFin computer system.

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