Slashdot Mirror
Enhanced Carnivore To Crack Encryption Via Virus
suqur writes: "MSNBC has a story about a new Carnivore feature, dubbed 'Magic Lantern,' which arrives on a victim's computer in the form of a virus through email or well-known vulnerabilities. Magic Lantern uses keylogging to extract keys typed in, and sends them off to the FBI. This is similar to a story reported on previously, but taken one step further, allowing computers to be compromised remotely."
In other news today, the FBI was arrested en masse for violating numerous newly legislated anti-terrorist laws prohibiting compromising remote computers...
a) The FBI kicks in your door and installs Outlook
b) You always open email with the subject "Snow White and the 7 FBI Agents"
c) You run the attachment called "FBILOVESYOU.VBS" (and you run Windows, Outlook, etc)
Blah, dumb communist FBI
Abuse my rationalization of rhetoric as either metaphor or monotomy.
Thanks to the FBI, a whole new market is now being pushed into exploring the world of alternative operating systems.
Talk about a boon to the Open Source movement! Show the people (not just the bad guys) that Microsoft's numerous vulnerabilities can be used by Big Brother to monitor them. I can't think of a better way to boost Linux distro sales.
The first thing that comes to mind is a flagrant violation of the DCMA.
:P. That was easy to get around.
How does the government expect to work around this one? There are so many things that can go wrong...
1. Probably OS-dependent. Remember: virii for one platform (i.e., Win) will probably not work for others. That was not hard to get around
2. Human link involved. This virus will presumably be propagated via email, or some other form of trojan. Those who tend to use encryption tend to block this type of thing from happening to their machine anyway. Yet another reason not to open email/attachments from an addresser named "CIA"
3. Network link involved. Those who use encryption are usually savvy enough to detect extra packets flying from their machine to some unknown address, which would easily be identified in a reverse-lookup.
My goodness, they are getting desperate, aren't they.
From: Bill@Slashdot.org
To: Fred@Slashdot.org
Subject: Magic Lantern.doc.pif
Hi! How are you?
I send you this file in order to have your advice.
See you later. Thanks
-- Dan
Better yet, rename it 'Quake', so you'll get better 3D acceleration for your PGP.
Are there any cases involving damage done to personal property in eavesdropping operations? That is, legal taps? Any lawyers here? I gotta imagine that this would be a very very dangerous thing for the government to get into. Not only could it cause damage to personal property, but if the suspect is smart enough to encrypt their stuff, they're going to be smart enough to know when they've been h4x0red by an email virus.
This story makes a lot more sense if you remove every reference to "our sources" and replace it with "my little brother." I believe *that*.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Of course, anyone who would be vulnerabe to this is either a moron or doesn't feel that they have anything to hide, so it seems kind of pointless.
Of course, the truely paranoid communicate with their computer using morse code with their space bar and scroll lock LED. I can see it now:
Head of Investigation: "What have we got from the J Random Hacker log file?"
Computer Specialist: "84,365,928 spaces, sir"
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
After it's renamed and loaded with the ATI drivers, PGP will encrypt things twice as fast, but side-by-side inspection will reveal it's algorithm to have switched to XOR.
I received an email with the subject "Good Times", and I opened it. My browser popped open, and sent me to a site that had the headline, "See what really happens 'behind closed doors' when John Ashcroft and George Bush get together." My firewall picked up something weird, but I don't know anything about that, because I was already getting ready to format my disk.
The truth about Scientology, Xenu, and you: Operation Clambake
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Give me liberty or give me something of equal or lesser value from your glossy 32-page catalog.
How many straws, America? How many?
Just one more! I promise.
"And like that