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State Department Developing Cyber Toolkit
An anonymous reader writes "The U.S. State Department, known for its recent RFID passport embarassment, seems to have developed a key tool in the Department of Homeland Security's cyber toolkit for federal agencies. There's not much out there on it other than mention of a tool called SandStorm in a recent press release from State's Bureau of Diplomatic Security. According to the site, "SandStorm simultaneously collects, correlates, and analyzes data on multiple computer systems and departs, leaving no trace of its activities. The White House is championing this cyber tool and the Department of Homeland Security has selected it as a cornerstone application for a cyber toolkit being made available to all Federal agencies." Sounds scary to me, but may be a step in the right direction."
Looks interesting...I give it 20 minutes before a copy is up on the torrent...*grins*. Then the script-kiddies can all go use it to spy on each other and prove their "1337-ness"...
Althought, truth be told - why exactly is the government telling us this? I mean, for all we know, they could have been developing these sorts of computer surveillance programs for years...in fact, they probably have. So why tell us about it now, in a highly-publicised press release? Or are they just trying to be seen to doing something, and seeming like they're on the cutting edge of technology? So maybe in truth they're actually quite clueless, and this program is nothing more than a hashed-up, worthless keylogger that looks like sample code from "Windows Internals"?
One wonders about their motives for this news release, though...
cya, Victor