Italian company Hacking Team is launching an investigation into over 400 GB of leaked documents;it believes former employees might have teamed up with suspected hackers to orchestrate the leak.

The document revealed company documents and source code and has been big news for the past two weeks, since the leak occurred.

Now, Italian prosecutors are reportedly investigating the possibility that the leak was an inside job.

“According to Reuters, the new criminal inquiry is in addition to the fact that the before the hack, several former employees were being privately accused of allegedly violating their contracts and using secrets to benefit competitors,” said Arstechnica.com.

“‘Hacking Team believes several former employees are in violation of the employment agreements in that they used their knowledge of the company and proprietary information to compete against Hacking Team,’ Eric Rabe, company spokesman, told Ars by e-mail on Sunday. ‘However, this is a personnel matter and the company has no further comment.'”

A former employee told Ars that the secretive environment Hacking Team developed as it grew from when he first began working there in 2007 likely has something to do with the leak potentially being an inside job.

“We almost didn’t have access. They really compartmentalized everything. That was really the moment that I stopped working there. What was the point of making so many secrets? There was a guy developing exploits for the mobile platform and I had no idea that he was working on exploits for my platform. It was normal to do that. I don’t like that! We weren’t even talking any more,” former employee Alberto Pelliccione told Ars.  

Several other employees in addition to Pelliccione came forward and said the data breach was likely revenge from a disgruntled former employee.

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