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."
Does this mean it will now be illegal to use a secure system? Having any type of security/virus protection will be circumvention of law-enforcing software.
And what happens if this "happens" to get installed on a foreign government's computer? Can we say "espionage"?
I can't say that I don't give a fuck. I've just run out of fuck to give.
What are the odds that antivirus software could be updated to find this virus? It obviously couldn't be cross-platform either. And if the gov't somehow manages to pressure a/v companies into not including it in virus defs, what would happen if some malicious kiddie got hold of the code, and unleashed a much more destructive version, knowing full well that most machines were not protected? Who would be liable in that case?
Where's my lobbyist? Right here.
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.
Remember Ken Thompson's hack! You only get the bonus points if you compiled the OS (and CD-ROM burning software) from source on a compiler you wrote yourself ;-)
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
Even easier: use an encryption program that their virus doesn't know how to sniff yet. Their virus doesn't sniff all keystrokes (yet), just for specific encyrption programs. You don't even necessary need to change encryption schemes, just use a different front-end for typing in your password.
At first I thought that this was just stupid, because no one running a reasonably secure system, keeping up to date with the latest patches, etc, would be caught by it. But then I thought: why rely on already known (and fixed) and other yet undiscovered holes, when you can roll your own?
recently seen in #anti-trust:
*** BillG is now known as GMoney ***
<GMoney> How can we get out of this DOJ crap?
<FBI> I have this "security patch" I'd like you to distributed through Windows Update. Say it fixes some hole using malformed URLs in IE5 and IE6. No one will blink twice. I'm not even sure most XP users can read.
<GMoney> Will you put in a good word for me with the DOJ?
<FBI> Sure.
<FBI> DOJ: Let Microsoft go scott-free, or I post incriminating pictures of John Ahscroft and Hilary Rosen to usenet.
<DOJ> Rokie dokie, baws.
GMoney laughs maniacally.
FBI laughs maniacally.
DOJ tries to laugh maniacally, but chokes on the pencil eraser he was chewing.
*poof*. Insta-hole. Security patches are worthless if you can't trust the source. And yes, this wouldn't work with non-MS OSes, especially decentralized open source ones. I hope.
-Puk