FITUG e.V. Förderverein Informationstechnik und Gesellschaft

[Spy News] Spy virus (fwd)

------- Forwarded message follows ------- Date sent: Wed, 5 Dec 2001 14:15:31 +0200 (EET) From: Jei <jei@cc.hut.fi> To: eurorights@eurorights.org, ukcrypto@chiark.greenend.org.uk Subject: [Spy News] Spy virus (fwd) Send reply to: ukcrypto@chiark.greenend.org.uk

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 3 Dec 2001 22:41:48 +0100 From: Mario Profaca <Mario.Profaca@zg.tel.hr> Reply-To: spynews-owner@yahoogroups.com To: "[Spy News]" <spynews@yahoogroups.com> Subject: [Spy News] Spy virus

Spy virus http://it.mycareer.com.au/news/2001/12/04/FFXNNPJ4RUC.html

Tuesday 04 December, 2001 By BARRY PARK The Age

Would a software vendor cooperate with the United States Government to spy on its citizens? Debate has raged in the past week over the existence of a virus named Magic Lantern, supposedly part of a United States Federal Bureau of Investigation project known as Cyber Knight, itself part of the wider Carnivore eavesdropping project.

Is the US federal agency developing a trojan that would log users keystrokes and then seeking the cooperation of US companies to overlook its activities?

The furore has its roots in a small story run in the Washington Post last week, and later picked up by MSNBC, announcing that global anti-virus software maker McAfee had held talks with the FBI about allowing a back door a software loophole to let the FBI slip a virus into remote computers undetected.

McAfee has since denied any such talks with the FBI took place. The journalist who broke the news, Associated Press Ted Bridis, stands by his story, saying the information came from a senior McAfee officer.

However, online IT news portal The Register said last week that another US anti-virus software maker, Symantec, had said it would not update its virus definitions to detect an FBI-sponsored trojan. The article says Symantec has contacted the US federal agency but was yet to hear back from it.

What apparently has the FBI worried is the increasing use of encryption, especially the widespread availability of encryption software, such as Pretty Good Privacy (PGP).

Bridis said the FBI was developing the Magic Lantern trojan as a way of discovering the private PGP key used by targeted systems, an act that, when combined with that systems public PGP key, opens data to scrutiny. Keylogging the private PGP key is faster than decrypting a message by reverse-engineering the public key.

MSNBC said the Carnivore beige boxes, developed by the FBI and used to filter data packets of interest from the Internet, are useless against encrypted data.

US Government officials have also admitted that the USA Patriot Act, anti-terrorism legislation introduced after the September 11 terrorist attacks, has helped lawmakers to achieve new levels of gathering electronic information.

A US Senate hearing was told last week that the new laws had already been used to obtain information from a cable company that provides Internet services. Under previous legislation, US cable companies were not obliged to hand over information.

The Senate inquiry into anti-terrorism legislation also makes reference to court orders seeking logs from out-of-district Internet service providers, as well as calling on emergency disclosure provisions to support the use of information provided by an ISP.

Even with the power granted by the USA Patriot Act, the reach of the US Governments cybercrime legislative power may get even wider. An amendment being sought to US federal law proposes changes to what is defined as a protected computer. Current legislation broadly limits the protection to US-based computers. However, if the amendment to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is approved, US authorities will be able to hunt down and prosecute international crackers attacking equipment outside US physical borders if any part of the data used in the crack passes through US-owned servers or routers.

---

FYI: This mail sent by Mario Profaca is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.303 / Virus Database: 164 - Release Date: 24. 11. 01

============================================== SPY NEWS is OSINT newsletter and discussion list associated to Mario's Cyberspace Station http://mprofaca.cro.net/mainmenu.html ============================================== *** NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to SPYNEWS eGroup members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for non-profit research and educational purposes only.

For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml

-----------------------------------------------

SPY NEWS home page: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/spynews

To change your subscription mode to Daily Digest (one message a day) send a blank message: mailto:spynews-digest@yahoogroups.com

Please note that replying to THIS e-mail will not remove you from the mailing list. To unsubscribe SPYNEWS send a blank message: mailto:spynews-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com

Mario Profaca, independent journalist, SPY NEWS eGroup list owner, editor & moderator, is a member of of the Committee of Concerned Journalists, an initiative administered through the offices of the Project for Excellence in Journalism in Washington, D.C.

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/

------- End of forwarded message -------

Zurück