A lot of us are missing what actually happened here.
Some random person downloaded Huntress to try it out. Not a company. Not through IT. Just clicked "start trial" like you might with any software. Were they trying to figure out how to get around it? We have no idea!
Huntress employees then decided - based on a hostname that matched something in their private database - to watch everything this person did for three months. Their browser history, their work patterns, what tools they used, when they took breaks.
Then they published it.
The "but EDR needs these permissions!" comments are completely missing the point. Yeah, we know EDR is basically spyware. The issue is that Huntress engineers personally have access to trial user data and apparently just... browse it when they feel like it? Based on hostname matches???
Think about what they're saying: they run every trial signup against their threat intel database. If you match their criteria - which could be as weak as a hostname collision - their engineers start watching you. No warrant. No customer requesting it. No notification. Just "this looks interesting, let's see what they're up to."
Their ToS probably says something vague about "security monitoring" but I doubt it says "we reserve the right to extensively surveil individual trial users for months and publish the results if we think you're suspicious." And even if it did, that doesn't make it right or legal.
They got lucky this time - caught an actual attacker. But what about next time? What about the security researcher whose hostname happens to match? The pentester evaluating their product? Hell, what about corporate users whose hostname accidentally matches something in their database?
The fact that they thought publishing this was a good idea tells you a lot. This isn't some one-off investigation. This is apparently? how they operate.
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