Swiss to Use Spyware to Listen to VoIP

An anonymous reader writes "Heise Security is reporting that the Swiss Department of the Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications is entertaining the idea of utilizing the 'Superintendant Trojan', a spyware program designed to allow eavesdropping on VoIP conversations. According to ERA IT Solutions, the creator of the software, it will only be distributed to investigation agencies in the hopes of keeping it out of the hands of malicious hackers since firewalls apparently 'do not present a problem' for the software."

Comments

4 words:

[creepynut]

Create it and they will get it.

yea right

[grapeape]

If the trojan can be installed it can be sniffed out and discovered. I give it at tops a week of deployment before someone figures out what it is how it works and backwards engineers it into instant maymem for all the black hats.

Re:yea right

[whoever57]

If the trojan can be installed it can be sniffed out and discovered.

Which then raises the interesting question: how will anti-spyware vendors (including MS) respond to this? There really are no good solutions for an anti-spyware vendor in this case, since detecting it could be considered as hindering law enforcement, which would be illegal in many jurisdictions.

Re:yea right

[Coldmoon]

"There really are no good solutions for an anti-spyware vendor in this case, since detecting it could be considered as hindering law enforcement..."

Actually it will turn out to be the exact opposite. Once the program is in the wild and the black hats get their hands on it, both the AV and AS vendors will have no other choice than to add it to their detections.

Regardless of whether the detection is for the original Trojan or not, any subsequent black hat variations found would be added and the original would in all likelihood be flagged due to the particular (add your own term here) scanning technology.

I really don't believe this

[El Cubano]

...it will only be distributed to investigation agencies in the hopes of keeping it out of the hands of malicious hackers...

Do they really think so?

I mean, that completely ignores human nature. Come on.

• radar detectors
• traffic light remotes (the new ones that only emergency vehicles are supposed to have)
• guns in countries where guns are illegal
• police-band radios

All these things have one thing in common: they are not supposed to be accessible to the general public (or at least initially were not supposed to be) and yet they are. Legality does not stop criminals.

The Victim

[NevDull]

Well, the thing about Trojans, is that the victim installs them.

This article is complete and utter bullshit.

"VoIP" is not a single computing platform or implementation.

Re:Depends.

[Captin Shmit]

"The ISPs of the persons under investigation will then slip the program onto their computers."

How do they plan on doing that, exactly?

Dear Swiss People

[SQLz]

Welcome to the USA!!!