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Coder of Swiss Wiretapping Trojan Speaks Out

Posted by Soulskill on from the is-swiss-software-full-of-security-holes dept.

Lars Sobiraj writes "Ruben Unteregger has worked for a long time as a software-engineer for the Swiss company ERA IT Solutions. His job there was to code malware that would invade PCs of private users, and allow the wiretapping of VoIP calls — in particular, calls made through Skype. In the German-speaking areas of the country, the Trojans were called 'Bundestrojaner' because the Swiss government was involved with their development and use. Unfortunately, Unteregger has to remain silent about the customers of the company. Last night, he published the source code of his Skype-Trojan under the GPL."

2 of 114 comments (clear)

  1. Re:GPL ? by wild_quinine · · Score: 5, Informative

    Most certainly the guy doesn't even own the source code since he did it under contract from an employer, so he cannot really "release" what is not his... Maybe I'm wrong and he owns the source code though.

    From the article:
    "There won't be problems about copyright, because ERA IT Solutions let me keep it... About the details, why I keep the copyright on this, I can't offer a statement. As already mentioned I agreed to absolute silence. You can speculate now or ask the sources directly. "

  2. Re:Call me naive... by jimicus · · Score: 5, Informative

    You're naive.

    I'm not going to go searching on Google now but there are already loads of malware toolkits out there being used by script kiddies, some of which are rather easier to use than "First learn to code in C". This doesn't change anything.