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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."
I always love art that is based on chaotic systems. It's really cool how order can arise from chaos, and vice-versa.
"performs packet-sniffing on a specific local area network"
lets hope no one is look at naughty pictues... might give an effect which is less than random, and a bit more 18+
Cruise TT
One of the critiques that I've seen of the FBI's Carnivore was that it required an ISP to install a "black box" on their network about which the ISP knew very little.
Would an open source Carnivore be more palatable to the ISP community? The privacy implications remain, of course, but if the U.S. government adopted an open source program would ISPs be more willing to implement it?
** The opinions expressed here are my own, and do not reflect those of my employers - past, present, or future**
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.....
....
.....
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
Cruise TT
I have to say, I am severely disappointed that they don't have a Matrix-style display. To have a realistic matrix display that contains real information about network data would just rock. Warm and fuzzy all over.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
Carnivore Server is a set of Perl scripts running on top of tcpdump
You know, sadly, this is probably far more sophisticated than the actual Carnivore system.
Good grief.
--
What happens when you outlaw guns
So they release a "Art Project" that convinces people to install a box on a bunch of networks, join an IRC channel and dump packets...
...
And this is a good thing because
???
Imagine setting up a dual-homed, 802.11b equipped laptop near a major business, then using this art project to broadcast what you hear to the world.
Scary!
Start secret message:
s^O(^S^XltkA@[1^Z;
end secret message
The previous has been a secret message to my comrades.
While I suppose this software could be used for legitimate security purposes, much as programs like Snort which monitor your network, the potential for abuse is great. By providing network administrators with a tool for sifting through network traffic for fun tidbits like email messages and other personal communications, the bar has been raised in the battle for privacy. Tools like this will make it that much easier for your ISP or employer to spy on you unless you take great precautions like encrypting everything. Since that's not always feasible, I guess we need to accept that there's no such thing as privacy on the net.
Of course that was always the case, but in the past it's been similar to the "school of fish" mode of defense. By schooling, fish reduce their chance of being singled out by predators. In a group of a million fish, the chance of any particular one of them getting eaten by a shark is small. One could liken this scenario to the millions of Internet users. But now, with tools like Carnivore, you can catch all of the fish at once and devour them at your leisure.
I think I see why it's named Carnivore.
Plus, you need to build your own compiler, starting with hand-built machine code and bootstrapping your way up (see the classic C Compiler hack).
Of course, you then need to build your own processor to ensure there are no hacks in the processor too...
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
This stuff is more enjoyable to look at than most of what's on the walls at the Guggenheim!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Just imagine it - due to the wild success of the SETI@home and protein folding efforts, the FBI has decided that they too can distribute the loads of finding nefarious people in the world.
And, with the MPAA and RIAA @home supplemental modules, your MP3s will be reported directly to the master FBI server...
I donate all spillover Karma to the charity of my choice... Ada was still a babe despite what people may say...
As much as I'd like to, very few, if any people I know have any idea how to decrypt PGP messages. The problem with PGP is you have to have one side to encrypt it and the other side to decrypt it, and since a lot of my friends, family members, and clients are 100% computer illiterate, it does not lend itself to being a realistic solution. I think all messages should, by default, be encrypted by all SMTP servers before they leave the network and be decrypted by the receiving SMTP servers before delivery, by using one of RSA's lovely encryption mechanisms, but that's just me.
Ok... Where do you see a right to privacy on the internet in general ???
I can not point to any protocol standard that says you have such a right.
Your packets travel over the internet through other administrative domains that you do not control... What makes you think you have privacy there ?
Now if you want privacy get PGP/FreeSWAN/isakmpd/etc. and make it so your packets have no meaning to any but the destination. Until then NEVER assume you have privacy...
Sad to say, while there were many compelling arguments for open sourcing Carnivore so that the public could see if the FBI's boxes could be trusted, there is a major downside.
You've just given Carnivore tools to the Chinese, The Iraqis and all the other oppressive governments of the world. Even though buying a network sniffer and configuring it was within their power before, this makes it easier.
And whatever fears I may have (and they are many) about the U.S. government and its agents abusing their powers, they are nothing compared to the fears I have about those other powers.
What we needed was two things. One was source review of the boxes the goverment uses by a wide range of trusted people, and two was a free as in free beer tool for U.S. ISPs so they can use it as an excuse to refuse a carnovore box on their ISP in the first place.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
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.
PGP, GnuPG, or whatever public key crypto you use, enables you to sign, verify, encrypt or decrypt documents. That's it. It's not an anonymizer. You can use them to keep your personal communications private, but they're useless for public posts on Slashdot. What good's a post on Slashdot that no one can read?
Now a PGP based mailing list would be a very Good Thing(tm). Encrypt your messages to the list server, which then sends it out encrypted for each subscriber.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
eythay illway evernay igurefay isthay outway!
Doesnt it seem just a little creepy that they (http://www.bsa.org/)have a globe with a (C)opy right sign on it?
"Not my manner of thinking but the manner of thinking of others has been the source of my unhappiness." - M
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
Wow, 45 days from seeing Carnivore as a horseman of the apocalypse to striving to make a more effective open source version.
Kevin Fox
I did this better in webcollage years ago. But of course I didn't call myself an Artist Collective, and I didn't put out a press release, so no article in the Times for me, darn. I guess that's why webcollage is a ``hack'' rather than an ``art project.''
I swear, one of these days I'm gonna apply for a federal grant to hack on xscreensaver . I've seen people get money for worse things . All you have to do is swallow your sanity and gag up an artist statement of some kind, and the literati will take you seriously: if you cloak it in pretentiousness, the most trivial piece of eye candy can become a Serious Work, full of Insight And Meaning!
The problem with art is artists. My goal has long been to eliminate the artist from the creative process.
Is it just me, or would anyone else be entirely unsurprised if the FBI discontinues development of carnivore and its successors, and swtiches to GNU carnivore? After all, now they have a similar application developed by experts all over the world, and they can review all of the code for backdoors. Hell, I can see governments all over the world picking up this program and abusing it to the detriment of humanity worldwide. I hate to say it, but this is one project that I wish had never happened, and will not miss if it dies out.
This isn't an "open source version of the FBI's Carnivore," and it's not a "GNU Carnivore." It's an art project inspired by the FBI's Carnivore, and it has nothing to do with monitoring internet usage or violating anyone's privacy. Basically, this Carnivore project serves up data culled from tcpdump, and then clients use the data to generate intriguing and sometimes beautiful audio or visual art. Go check it out; it's very cool.
If you freely give something to the government, there is ZERO Constitutional protection on that information.
The Constitution (4th) just says the government can't take information from you. Doesn't say a damn thing about what they already have.
Kindly tell me where in the Constitution it says that they can't freely publish your tax records for example.
The 9th and 10th are the only ones that can remotely be considered protecting privacy, but those aren't enforced worth crap.