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American Targeted By Digital Spy Tool Sold To Foreign Governments
An anonymous reader points out a report in Wired of an American woman at a "renowned academic institution" who received targeted malware from what was most likely a foreign government. "... analysis of [the downloader] showed that it was the same downloader that has been used in the past to install Remote Control System (RCS), a spy tool made by the Italian company Hacking Team and sold to governments." What's significant about this malware is that it is made by an Italian firm who claims they sell it only to government and law enforcement bodies, and it isn't of much use to your standard botnet operator. "The RCS tool, also known as DaVinci, records text and audio conversations from Skype, Yahoo Messenger, Google Talk and MSN Messenger, among other communication applications. It also steals Web browsing history and can turn on a computer’s microphone and webcam to record conversations in a room and take photos. The tool relies on an extensive infrastructure to operate and therefore is not easily copied and passed to non-government actors outside that infrastructure to use for their own personal spy purposes, according to a Hacking Team spokesman." There's no solid proof indicating who is responsible, but the malware email contained a link to a website in Turkey. "Turkey is a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization alliance. If authorities there were behind the hack attack, it would mean that a NATO ally had attempted to spy on a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil, presumably without the knowledge or approval of U.S. authorities, and for reasons that don't appear to be related to a criminal or counter-terrorism investigation."
Sounds like this and this and this and many others targeting individual groups or nationals such as Tibetans, Pakistanis and others.
The poor USA is getting spied on. The audacity! A country that's always on its best behavior and has NEVER spied on allies, ever! Besides, are you sure that this isn't rebound spying, where the US lets others spy on US citizens to get information that they wouldn't be allowed to acquire directly themselves?
Turkey wasn't happy attacking their own people, and is now attacking our citizens in our homes and businesses?
If we sell all the Americans targeted by spy tools to other governments then that might close the budget gap!
"His name was James Damore."
Hack the Planet!
> a report in Wired of an American woman at a "renowned academic institution"
>
> can turn on a computer’s microphone and webcam
TOIDH
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Thanks, all we really needed to know, I guess.
Let me send you one with a link to a website in Mexico. Sorry, make that Sweden. Germany? Italy? Take your pick.
And there the subject line finds its origin. I love a good tinfoilhat story, but this is not even that. This is pretty much wild guesses.
Innocents who have no interest in this sort of crap are getting caught in the bullshit "cyberwar"
How about we round up all the spies, all the fundamentalists on both sides, all the cyber criminals and even those who would write posts like yours and shoot them into the sun on a rocket. Then the rest of us can go back to enjoying a decent life.
I'm inclined to believe that Turkey may be responsible here. Remember, these aren't actors capable of writing their own spyware. They simply bought a package from someone else and, presumably, put in their email address where it called for an email address in configuration. Hanlon's razor.
Whoa! Stop the presses!!! You mean to tell me that countries that are nominally allies sometimes carry out covert intelligence operations against each other?
If this comes as a shock to anybody, anywhere, you need to crawl out from under the proverbial rock. It happens all. the. time.
And "a link to a website in Turkey" is hardly proof of anything. At all. And if it came from a GMail account, would there be dark aspersions that Google was behind it all?
The US not only spies on it allies, but uses their citizens, as well as their own, in human experiments such as hacking the brain with radio and teaching an AI how to manipulate humans.
The US ceased being a true allied nation a long time ago and is treated with suspicion right across the world. At present, the US can be best describe as in a state of cold-like war with its own allies.
So because a difference piece of software has been used in conjunction with RCS in the past, this use of that software must also have something to do with RCS?
Gotta put these things in perspective...
If you read the article, the researcher did not download or examine the payload. They used a honeypot to view the downloader, but not the payload. The payload could be anything, but the downloader was used by a known software vendor.
The truth shall set you free!
Came here wondering how an American woman got sold to a foreign government. Great job as always, editors.
How shocking anyone should spy on the US when we spy on everyone, all the time, world wide.
If the traffic is a signal of any type we are scooping all of it up. The US empire at work, we will tolerate no near peer rivals, any means are legit.
It's all a fiendish plot to eliminate the meal of dinner.
> It is the job of any national government to protect itself from its citizens
FTFY.
I'm pretty sure the US already does this -- possibly not for reasons other than criminal or counter-terrorism though.
But, really, since we know with Carnivore and pretty much everything else the US spies on NATO allies as well.
Unless we're meant to believe the US only does this on NATO allies with their express approval and oversight. Because, a t a minimum, we know the CIA has kidnapped people in Italy, a NATO member, without telling anybody.
Does anybody really think countries don't actively spy on their allies if they feel the need?
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
The headline parsed as "(American Targeted By Digital Spy Tool) Sold To (Foreign Governments)."
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
Re: "these aren't actors capable of writing their own spyware" - Italy has had its SISMI military intelligence agency using the telco 'network' in very creative ways. ....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SISMI-Telecom_scandal
If that is the quality of the systems created/used/requested over time in the EU, the ability to enter one computer network seems not too hard?
ie if you have a simple domestic surveillance program covering 1000's of people, whats one US network in 2013 with that skill/support set?
You also had http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_wiretapping_case_2004–2005
~ 100's Greek government and top-ranking civil servants
Any state friendly with the NSA (the USA used Turkey eg Karamursel as the UK GCHQ used Cyprus) - generations going back to Adana flights, U2 from Turkey, generations of sigint collection. That help will not be forgotten by the USA when requesting access to top level US software/hardware telco vendors and cleared any export issues.
As for "without the knowledge or approval of U.S. authorities" - the NSA would have understood this event, how much they felt/had to tell other "U.S. authorities" about ongoing foreign operations is ???
The CIA had Operation CHAOS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_CHAOS to spy on people protesting the Vietnam War/Cuba/antiwar issues, perhaps groups in the US gov are just helping EU/friendly govs do the same with people of interest around the world as they protest?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
it would mean that a NATO ally had attempted to spy on a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil, presumably without the knowledge or approval of U.S. authorities
Why in the world would anyone think this?
Ph.Ds are just as clueless as the rest of us when it comes to using their computers.
grammer
A woman at an academic institution in the US is getting spied on. This is an important distinction sadly ignored by the attention grabbing headline; not everything every person does in a country should count as a direct proxy for that country. If it did, the act of spying would be a logical contradiction.
Americans should not be sold to foreign govt, irrespective of whether these Americans are targeted by Digital Spy Tools or not. It's like throwing the baby out with the bathwater or something.
Hey America, didn't you get the memo that you wrote? National sovereignty and international law means nothing any more! Someone in another country pissing you off? Just shout "terrorism" and have them harassed and extradited on phony rape charges, or you can abduct them for torture, or kill them with a drone, or send in a team of seals. Shit, what's a bit of spying between friends? Chill out bro.
-- William Gibson, "Burning Chrome"
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
...because hackers have better tools they get for free from the Interwebs. Of course, if it does turn out to be hackers, this Italian firm could always stick a EULA on it and have the BSA enforce. Hackers aren't afraid of the government, but BSA lawyers scare everyone.
Please explain to me, oh person that modded this flamebait, how an opinion which is rather common (especially outside of the US) is flamebait? Perhaps a rational person with mod points will correct the rating? I have no mod points today, or would do so myself.
As a side note, more and more Americans are beginning to see the validity of these opinions.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
How hard would it have been to reword the title to the equally concise, yet unambiguous, "Digital Spy Tool Sold To Foreign Governments Used to Target American"?
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
((Digital Spy) Tool) Sold To (Foreign Governments Used to (Target American))? Foreign governments accustomed to a Target American were sold a digital spy named Tool?
If the subject is "American Targeted By Digital Spy Tool" the story is funnier.
... Is how much was the american that was first spied upon sold for and to what foreign government? Is the spied americans a market worth getting into?
Curiously yours, crip.
Damn, reading the title of the submission I thought for sure I'd be reading another lurid tale of John McAfee being singled out for persecution by TPTB. What a disappointment!
"I was with you right up until you said "hacking the brain with radio"
I guess you don't keep up to date with mind control technology. A lot of techiemilitary and government (news) sites have this info as well as civ sites. Google an old pub "The mind has no firewall".
(Some of) Our minds are being targeted as experimentation.
With all of the published violations against human rights by governments and corporations experimenting on them, it's laughable to believe that beast has been chained.
Stay current with gov+corp news on the subject, don't just follow stories about people playing games with their mind.
http://i306.photobucket.com/albums/nn250/paawkx/cat_confus.jpg
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
Just pointing out (pedantically) that your "unambiguous" version of the sentence is not perfectly unambiguous: there are multiple different grammatically correct ways to interpret the phrase.
For example, "used to" might be taken in the sense of "a spoon is used to eat soup," or as in "he is used to being correct"; in the latter case, "Target" might be an adjective modifying "American," rather than the verb form "to Target". It might be the "Foreign Governments" that are "used to target American," rather than the "Digital Spy Tool," etc. etc.
Language is a tricky thing --- and most human languages are not especially well structured to produce purely unambiguous statements. A large amount of context (that you naturally and easily fill in) is necessary; one of the big problems that makes "natural language" computer control or automated translation extremely difficult.