Hacking Team hackers investigated by Italian police over claims they exposed corporate secrets

Hacking Team also considered building Wi-Fi network busting drone with Boeing

Developers who worked for Hacking Team, the security software vendor that sold cyber surveillance tools to governments worldwide, have been questioned by Italian police over claims that they exposed the company's trade secrets.

It follows a devastating cyber attack on the company that saw almost all its internal systems exposed and close to half-a-terabyte of internal data dumped on the internet - including the source code to the company's products.

The investigation into six former staff at Hacking Team follows complaints from the company's CEO David Vincenzetti, which were filed in May. In the formal complaints, Vincenzetti accused the six former employees of revealing some of the company's source code.

Although the attack on Hacking Team occurred just two months later, the company had courted controversy for a number of years and, furthermore, some of its activities might be considered legally dubious if conducted by an individual.

Some of the latest details to emerge from Hacking Team's data trove include revelations that it was working with Boeing to equip drones with Wi-Fi hacking hardware. The initiative followed a demonstration at an arms fare in Dubai in February of what Vincenzetti called "Tactical Network Injector" - software designed to inject malicious code into Wi-Fi networking hardware that could be used to compromise wireless networks.

The software drew the attention of a Boeing subsidiary over the possibility that it could be loaded onto drones so that controllers could remotely hack Wi-Fi networks. It is, however, unclear how far such talks went, with information released as a result of this month's hack indicating that it was held up by legal considerations.

Also emerging today has been information about how Hacking Team managed to bypass security checks in Google Play, enabling the company to slip malware into the Google Play store.