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Germany Plans To Email Trojans
speardane sends us word of a proposal in the German legislature to make it legal for that government to email spyware to terror suspects. The action comes in response to a court denying prosecutors' requests to break into suspects' computers over the Internet. The German chancellor supports the measure despite considerable outcry from political opponents and rights groups.
It sounds like the honour virus to be honest, "We need to monitor you, if you would wear this covert recording hat whilst doing your illegal stuff it would be fan-diddly-astic".
Will it be illegal to thwart the attack?
Will it become illegal to use an alternative operating system or antivirus software or even just common sense to deflect these payloads?
liqbase
...sincerely,
The Terrorists.
Now wont the terrorists set up their own honeypots for these?
I think it would be pretty cool to get a trojen written by the government, that sends data back to the government and is read by computers in the most secret government areas... imagine what terrorists could do if they find a bug in it?
The leader of your terrorist cell has sent you an e-card! Double-click the attachment to view it!
[Attached: ecard.exe]
...terror suspects will know they are being investigated.
If I were a terrorist, or really any kind of nefarious criminal (because you just know there are foolish people salivating about doing the same to any criminal suspects) I would welcome this decision. If was a bad guy and I was worried that 'they' were on to me, receiving this trojan would be proof positive.
And then I would take the opportunity to feed false information back to the people who sent me the trojan. Hooo boy, what a great way to make trouble for people I don't like, better than falsely reporting them to the IRS.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
To come up with a way to distribute birth control so efficiently! This would never work in America though, it's difficult enough getting them out of that quarter machine that resides in the restroom at the gas station.
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Papers that leaked from the German Federal Ministry of the Interior state that legal regulation allowing so called remote forensic searches exist
m -beantwortet-fragen-zur-online-durchsuchung/
- explicitly in Romania, Cypria, Latvia, Spain, and Switzerland,
- implicitly in Slovenia,
and that a similar approach to establish explicit allowance for remote forensic searches is ongoing in Sweden. At least readers in Sweden should contact their members of parliament and do some lobbyism. The current political discussion in Germany only got that public attention beacause some people started what they call nerd lobbyism.
The German papers are available at http://netzpolitik.org/2007/bundesinnenministeriu
It is also noteworthy that an also leaked draft of a new law regarding German federal criminal police (c.f. CCC press release at http://www.ccc.de/updates/2007/bkaterror) lists several other new or extended competencies.
Criticism claims that Germany is on it's way to reinstate a secret police, with the last German incarnations being http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestapo.
How is this different from being allowed to tap someone's phone or plant a bug? As long as warrants are involved this sounds like the privacy law actually working since they aren't allowed to carry out any espionage that isn't specificially allowed by law.
Next they will just email their super duper virus to child porn operators, then tax evaders, then jay walkers. As the DMCA and the Patriot Act have taught us, if it can be abused, it will. It's just human nature, or the nature of people who choose to work for the man, anyway.
I guess we need to wait for another generation to get into politics, the one that is currently growing up with computers.
How is that going to help necessarily? The relative number of people who actually understand computers isn't going up. The current crop of high schoolers just uses (or attempts to use....) the things without the least understanding of the technical, societal, or political issues involved. If anything, they're even dumber. They put their whole lives on MySpace and Facebook for the perusal of others.To be sure, there are always new geeks coming along but without a radical shift in our own understanding of how things other than computers work, we aren't going to help matters much either.
Entire IP range used by governmental mail servers now blacklisted by most email filters.
And I was half hoping it would finally grow out of fashion to be ashamed of this country now that the US was setting the world standard in pulling all this crap. Premature hope, apparently.
"You've got a friend! OsamaBL wants to add you to his friendslist, Cancel or Allow?"
I expect this is already being done. The only issue really is how to bring anything found into court.
...and then trade data with the said country's law enforcement personnel.
Non-Germans would be expected to have no rights in a German court of law. Non-Americans have little rights in an American Court of law. This means it is legal for one country's law enforcement personnel to spy on non-citzens
The thing is how a German citizen living in Germany would be taken into court in Germany.... Similarly, how would an American Citizen be taken into court in America? If the said individual lives outside of his own country then perhaps its a bit easier...
Nevertheless, our authorities have been spying on everyone for decades.
I think all this really boils down to is what is admissible in a court of law. I doubt it will have any effect on what our spies actually do on a day to day basis.
...that the Trojan won't actually be realized. (BBC):
But that depends on a lot of factors. Germany's biggest hacker organization the Chao Computer Club and others are very effectively campaigning against this plans.
In recent news (only german, sorry) the federal police states that it won't be a trojan but what they call "remote forensic software" which they intend to install on the terrorists' computer manually. More like a software version of a bug (in the covert listening device sense).
"Hannibal's plans never work right. They just work." Amy/A-Team
So what are they going to title the e-mail? I mean, they'll have to be really clever, to make sure the terrorists actually open it:
"dude! you'll never believe what Osama said"
"wow, I can't believe you haven't blown yourself up yet"
"this video has your 72 virgins in it!"
Didn't Germany recently pass a law banning most "hacking" tools, and by extension, most tools that can be used to detect and defeat hacking? And if so, could these be related? I sincerely hope not, since if so, someone (or multiple persons) in the German government is outclassing the Bush administration in asshole terrorism laws. Suspected of terrorism? Get a trojan. Try to detect/remove the trojan? Break the law and get sent to jail anyway!
Yes, I know that it can be a stretch to say that no hacking tools means you can't still defeat this trojan, but maybe they could either create a trojan that could only be defeated that way, or just expand the law in later years to make it illegal to use anti-virus software "in a way that interferes with a government investigation" or something. Either way, it could lead to some scary stuff if properly abused. Even if you don't start the cycle of getting sent to prison, a trojan can dig up some nice information about enemies of yours.
You'll have a hard time getting that through.
The German government could technically issue a "please do not find" letter. Now, I know a few people with a few AV labs and such a letter would most likely be met (inofficially) immediately with a shady tool on a shady page finding exactly this trojan and nothing else.
But let's just for a moment assume that this won't happen. Instead, KAV gives the German government the finger, citing the "Russia is big, the Czar is far" proverb. Avira would most likely be forced to comply, sitting in Germany, so would probably some other EU-based AV vendors.
They would, though, immediately go to Den Hague and sue for unfair trade disadvantages due to the laws in one member country.
AV writers tend to be a zealous lot. If you think the EFF is hard on GPL violations, you've never seen AV fanatics meet malware proponents.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Ya, that label will never be abused.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I thought the Trojans were wiped out long ago.
caused by an errant shell.
Well in peace time anyway.
I had a sister who lived in Lawton OK for a long time and a few random shells made way from the artillery range from time to time.
That's why they fire duds. The damage is limited to a small diameter.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Will the German government call upon anti-virus makers to allow the Trojans to be inserted onto machines without a red flag being raised?
Will the anti-virus companies go along with such a request?
--
They already said they'd refuse.