GNU Carnivore With Perl Data Lookup

Kallahar writes: "Inspired by the FBI's DCS1000: Carnivore is a networked art project in two parts. The first part is Carnivore Server, an application which performs packet-sniffing on a specific local area network and serves the resulting data stream via the net. The second part consists of an unlimited number of client applications which tap into this data stream and interpret it in creative ways."

Comments

glaring security problems

[JohnHegarty]

On November 17th, a draft version of a review of Carnivore, the FBI tool for monitoring Internet traffic, was made available to the public. This review was performed by members of the ITT Research Institute in Lanham, Maryland and is 127 pages long. In the Executive Summary, the review makes several recommendations for ways in which Carnivore must be improved, in order to protect individual privacy and assuage concerns about the potential for unauthorized use.....
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In other words, they found a flawed product, which can currently be easily manipulated to gather information beyond that authorized in a court order. They believe the flaws are fixable and have made recommendations as to what needs to be done, including eventually releasing the source, but not until some glaring security problems have been fixed first.............
Read on here:
http://www.lwn.net/2000/1207/security.php3

All net traffic now under Carnivore surveillance?

[Spootnik]

If you are nervous about your messages being intercepted, get yourself a implementation of PGP and use it religiously. If you are really feeling paranoid, get the source code to 'Gnu Privacy Guard' and compile your own copy.

I am part-owner of one ISP, and know personally top network administrators for at least a dozen other providers, both major and minor. None of them have 'Carnivore' or other government-mandated software or hardware on their networks.

The Feds did make a one-time request of several major providers to scan their logs for email with a certain set of 'From' addresses, but there is no new ongoing traffic analysis at individual ISPs.

There is absolutely no privacy left on the Net any more. None. Keep that in mind when you rant. That's what crypto is for. Ranting on Slashdot is by it's very nature, about as public as you can get.

Re:Want to cause havoc with their monitoring?

[Arandir]

Remember "The Prisoner"? In one episode they briefly mentioned "jamming" to disrupt the activities of the warders. A later episode, "Hammer into Anvil", showed awesome jamming in practice.

"Prisoner" style jamming would be stuff like secretly passing (real) grocery lists, abruptly changing your well known hobbies, getting a post office box that you only use for two of your four magazine subscriptions, etc. Makes the warders think you're up so something so they expend effort trying to figure it out.

So what would "Carnivore" style jamming be? It can't be just randomness, and it has to be at least semi-legitimate. Posting signed and encrypted random streams won't count, because it's not real. And it can't get you in real trouble. One idea: create a PGP key for "Anonymous Coward", and sign all of your AC posts to Slashdot with it. Another: always use a signature tag composed of 26 randomly selected letters, all lowercase.

The key to getting jamming to work is for all the jammers to respond appopriately to other jammers. When one jammer sends you a PGP signed grocery list, send him or her your chocolate cheesecake recipe.