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'Babar' Malware Attributed To France
sarahnaomi writes: The NSA, GCHQ, and their allies in the Five Eyes are not the only government agencies using malware for surveillance. French intelligence is almost certainly hacking its targets too — and now security researchers believe they have proof. On Wednesday, the researchers will reveal new details about a powerful piece of malware known as "Babar," which is capable of eavesdropping on online conversations held via Skype, MSN and Yahoo messenger, as well as logging keystrokes and monitoring which websites an infected user has visited. The researchers are publishing two separate but complementary reports that analyze samples of the malware, and all but confirm that France's spying agency the General Directorate for External Security (DGSE) was responsible for its creation.
The first ever malware to work only 35 hours a week...
Basically, we have very strong reasons to believe this is the case, but we don't have enough evidence yet to say conclusively that they are responsible. The researchers are likely saying that they clearly did it, but backing off just a bit to not be at risk of getting sued.
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They present a lot of information that will lead to that conclusion, but do not themselves state that the conclusion is fact.
Sig withheld to protect the innocent.
"All but confirm" means "everything up to, but not actually, confirming".
So the "all but" includes "strongly suggests", "gives reason to believe", and similar suggestive (but non-confirming) phrases.
In other words: "We can't confirm (prove) the assertion, but we strongly believe in the assertion."
"Everything short of" is a similar phrase.
-kgj
It could have been the Asterix malware. That shit doesn't just spy on you, it beats the crap out of of you - and then has a nice feast to celebrate!
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Lord forbid a security researcher share list of user name and passwords, or a journalist post a link to a database dump, or a college student download a large number of academic journal articles through MIT's computer network.... These evil computer hackers need to be put away forever to protect the children, moral people everywhere, and our pristine government that can do no wrong. The death penalty probably won't be too good for them!
However, should the government want to hack us, destroy our privacy, intercept and tamper with postal packages, harm the computing environment in general by embedding back doors and exploits into software/hardware, etc. by all means this is perfectly OK. Hell, we should be grateful they are doing this for us poor pleebs since we can't think for ourselves. I mean this is the government; they know what's best for us.
So kill the "hackers" for doing something that doesn't even remotely approach the level of invasiveness described by this article and others, but let the government do anything they like in the name of "security" and "safety." Or hell, maybe even because they just feel like it. Who are we to question our betters?
This crap makes me sick.
There must be a commercial break on Fox News. You better get back, you might miss something.
I mean, who else is going to craft malware named after french speaking elephant.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Everyone get online and start talking about terrorism to flood the snoopers.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
This proves that all the whining about the NSA has little to do with actual worries (as if anyone in the government actually cares about their porn viewing habits), and more to do with overwrought anti-Americanism.
No, it doesn't.
We are more concerned about the NSA doing it because it has a bigger budget and because, for a lot of slashdotters, it's our government that's doing it. It's still a subject for humor, but nevertheless a real social policy concern. I've met a lot of great guys who work in law enforcement whom I would generally trust not to abuse the powers created by massive surveillance, but the problem arises when too much trust is given and there isn't enough oversight of how it is used. As it is, the public is not given any believable claim to even the existence of meaningful oversight.
That means bad actors within the system can use it to spy on people they know, on their own ex-wives, for example. And while they might get severely disciplined if they're caught, the public hasn't been told how likely it is that they're caught.
It also means the system can be used to blackmail VIPs, power-brokers, reporters, and legislators. While most of the people involved would not use it for that, it only takes one or two people to be willing to do that and a lack of *perfect* oversight and reporting for a system like this to utterly threaten and destroy any notion of representative government.
Imagine you have a database of every Congressman's phone calls, or even every third or fourth phone call that happens to be to someone within a three-hop warrant of a terrorist.
I think it's more to do with the inevitability of the French=Surrender Monkeys meme. Personally, I think this makes it all the more evidence that this is a government practice that we need to eliminate. Those behind this malware are criminals and we should see them as such.
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And there is no fucking oversight.
Aue contraire - the Israelis would disagree with you on this particular matter.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
The 'Bieber' malware has been attributed to Canada, which is capable of infecting all news websites with inane celebrity gossip.
In a sealed room with only one way in or out, you have a corpse, you have a person standing over the corpse covered in blood and holding the murder weapon. A camera outside shows that both entered the room together and no one else has been in to or out of the room.
However, you did not see them drive the knife in to the person causing death. You have all but confirmed this is the killer.
As an American, I have the right, duty and obligation to complain about the NSA's illegal bullshit because they're (ostensibly) claiming to represent me as a citizen, while acting against my interests as a citizen. France, on the other hand, is a sovereign foreign nation, in which I have no standing to complain.
The spying is bad no matter who's doing it, but it's the French citizens' job to fix France's spying, not mine, just as it's American citizens' job to fix the USA's spying, not theirs.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
The "evidence" are : 1) babar & titi the names (babar from a children book published in 1931... and has pretty much international readership and has shows in canada) Or pretty damn simply a fan of soccer.
2) MSIE misspelled as MSI which anybody could have done
That is quiiiite flimsy. I hope they have more.
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I figure they are going after most users which will exclude hackers since they all use Linux or some form of to do their work.
This malware invades Windows desktop machines and aims at exfiltrating almost anything of value: it steals data from instant messengers, softphones, browsers and office applications .. A target machine is infected possibly through a drive-by or malicious e-mail attachments. Babar is deployed through a malware dropper, which installs the malware ...
They surrendered in WW2 and still can't live it down, but aside from that the meme isn't accurate. Their special forces are usually considered some of the best in the world, and the french resistance certainly managed to make the Nazi occupiers lives difficult.
The English still remember kicking French arse at Agincourt, of course. Even if it was six hundred years ago. We didn't just win - we won by such a margin as to give them humiliation that will last a thousand years.
As long as my ICQ chats aren't vulnerable Im happy
This proves that all the whining about the NSA has little to do with actual worries (as if anyone in the government actually cares about their porn viewing habits), and more to do with overwrought anti-Americanism.
Quite the opposite. It proves that the anti-French sentiment is so strong in the US and UK that it drowns any rational discussion.
The report says "Titi is a French diminutive for Thiery, or a colloquial term for a small person".
Well first it's Thierry with two 'r's, but I've never seen titi being used as a diminutive for it, though that's because nobody would stand to it being used in public. Then there's the titi parisien but I've never seen titi referring to a small person.
But all this misses the point. Just like an uninspired English-speaking programmer will call his variable 'foo' and then 'bar' if he needs a second one, a French programmer will call his variable 'toto' (from the classic Toto jokes) and then 'titi' if he needs a second one (and then 'tata' but normally by the time he reaches tutu he realizes he really needs to straighten up ;-) ).
So what this really tells us is that this developer has a collegue whose username is 'toto'.