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Nmap Author Receives FBI Subpoenas

Posted by timothy on from the mens-rea dept.

spafbnerf writes "Fyodor, author of the open-source network scanning tool Nmap, posted a story to the nmap-hackers list about having received a number of subpoenas from the FBI this year, demanding webserver log data, none of which produced anything, either because they sought old information that had already been deleted from his logs, or because the subpoenas were improperly served. In every case the request was narrowly crafted, usually directed at finding out who visited the site in a very short window of time, such as a five minute period. Fyodor writes: "If they see that an attacker ran the command "wget http://download.insecure.org/nmap/dist/nmap-3.77.t gz" from a compromised host, they assume that she might have obtained that URL by visiting the Nmap download page from her home computer"." Update: 11/25 20:21 GMT by T : Reader kv9 adds a link to Kevin Poulson's story at SecurityFocus.

4 of 390 comments (clear)

  1. Seems reasonable by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That seems like a legitimate investigative technique. They're probably trying to match up different pieces of evidence to find the person behind things.

    1. Re:Seems reasonable by RonnyJ · · Score: 5, Insightful
      That seems like a legitimate investigative technique.

      Yes, though the main concern of mine is that he says the FBI were using subpoenas that were improperly served - how many people wouldn't bother checking, and just give up information straightaway?

  2. Seems valid by Staplerh · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Even the Nmap Author seems to agree that it could help in the fight against these undesirable script kiddies, etc. However, I think it is great that this author has brought this to public attention, and will hopefully increase oversight of these cyber-investigations.

    Of course, we do need law enforcement and this is a legitimate field to investigate so that we can have protected web commerce. With eyes on their activities, we can hopefully keep the Internet free and safe. Thoughts?

    --
    "There's no success like failure, and failure's no success at all."
    - Bob Dylan
  3. Re:Valid investigation techniques? by nomadic · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Since when are fishing expeditions effective?

    Ask anyone who's ever caught a fish.

    Seriously, if they don't have any concrete leads, what are they supposed to do? Just stop investigating?