Where Will It End?

[Guest Individual11]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6973018.stm

You just gotta ask yourself where it will all end?!?! The most disturbing part of the equation is that anyone disagreeing with what is obviously a very heavy-naded, knee-jerk reaction, is branded "un-patriotic" and a "threat to the state".

When I was growing up and Russia was still a Communist Dictatorship, my folks used to remind me that I was lucky I had freedom of speech and that my government didn`t spy on me like they did in Russia. Seems that times have changed considerably ... and all this in a country where it is as yet unclear whether it is illegal to have oing and telnet on your box!!!!

[What]

Ridiculous. Understandable, but ridiculous. "used only in a few cases and for a limited time." They can say what they want but that doesnt make it true. What are they going to program the trojan to delete its self after a week? But it could be worse, and if your not a terrorist you have nothing to worry about. However, if they were going after pirates then you would have a problem. LOL Edited September 4, 2007 by What

[Loki]

German government plans to spy on terror suspects by deploying malicious e-mails have drawn sharp criticism.

They really think that terrorists open random attachments and don't protect themselves? The only ones who they will be able to monitor are those who have nothing to hide.

Edited September 4, 2007 by Loki

[Teddy Rogers]

So they are going to search the computers of suspected terrorists and find what? "My big bombing plan.txt" or "Lets try to blow up London again.doc" or "Osama Bin Laden.adr". That one is going to work

Ted.

[Guest P43]

Or the bin laden photo as your desktop background. or the recycler bin has a new name BIN laden.

Edited September 4, 2007 by P43

[Guest Individual11]

So they are going to search the computers of suspected terrorists and find what? "My big bombing plan.txt" or "Lets try to blow up London again.doc" or "Osama Bin Laden.adr". That one is going to work

Ted.

Ted,

You`re busted! You have a picture of Osama Bin Laden so quite clearly one can deduce from that fact that you are obviously a terrorist. You will now be surveilled and your movements and communications watched and then "we" (the nameless organisations who undertake such activity) will soon capture all wanted terrorists.

PS. If you could attach "My Big Bombing Plan.txt" to this thread to save wasting valuable resources in a meticulous search. Many thanks!

[Ufo-Pu55y]

"My big bombing plan.txt" or "Lets try to blow up London again.doc" or "Osama Bin Laden.adr".

ROFL ... who knows ?

[metr0]

I think they also wanted to cooperate with security comapanies (or force them to cooperate, who knows) that they'll hide their trojan from detection. But do they really think they'd be the only ones then who'll know about that security hole? Oh no, the crackers (meaning virii autors etc.) will never find it, never... -.- Stupid government.

[cond0lence]

Believe me, if you ever want to ask me why it seems that nobody tries to stop this, I would not have the answer. They do what they do. And they did online analysing already in 2005 (as much as the sources are thrustful), but nobody had known something about this doing, that they are acting against the law. Maybe somebody could explain me, why nothing happened since this secret was discovered? They could catch innocent ppl and get no punishment for this, what they do? Eh, what for a world is this?

Hey Mr. Schauble, you will never twist our law anyways you try it again and again, not for your profit (or whatever you plan), not against our privacy, because we are just Citizens of this country nothing more.

Its a little shine of hope, that he finally got reactions of the other cabinet ministers, after this stories goes into the second year now. Online analysing, trojan, whatever you want to google for, you get always a strike in the combination with the names or german. The land of freedom. What a joke. When I have to see that Mrs. Merkel shaking hands with bush and some things happen, which reminds me you know relations in countries.. Welcome to the new united states.

[Killboy]

Hey Mr. Schauble

Why does that make me laugh so hard

[cond0lence]

There are enough dark Visions, which aren't caught out of air so far.

Well, the popular stories (Maybe I read them too many times) like 1984, brasil, brave new world, minority report, and so on.. are not fairytales, I hope the future won't be so real in the way they try to describe, written in times nobody believed it. It goes all about (human) rights, rights of decisions and control.

Ok, you have nothing to fear you aren't criminal, but why collecting infos eventually before of all or profiling and who guarantee you, that they erase it. It could be, there will be someday no difference more, you are in a database. Can you be sure, you are in the right one or that it will never happen?

Its an open decision to post private things in web, you may have heard about this woman, who were dancing on a table at a party (or whatever) and the boss got a pic that was posted in a blog, had suddenly a reason and she was fired, somehow. No I'm not talking about me . But, You would know and understand why this kind of funny stuff is spread.

But in the case you did nothing, but there is maybe somehow an entry in a database.. Or if we not only talking about data and extend this idea with gen-code. Just preventive that nobody will ever be criminal, which was really in some politics minds not far ago. Really, scary visions about data mining. Where are human rights, that let minister like Mr. Schaeuble doing that, thinking that? The one before had the almost the same everyone-is-suspecious-global-world-paranoia.

The world has changed already. There are more Ghettos in towns, amok kids (where ppl try to find the reason in games) and where its easier to get things just for a some called protection. What it needs is a bit more liberalism, fairness and as much as nobody kills other human beings or somebody force me to pray 5 times a day in the future maybe, shall everyone believe what he/she wants, if this helps them. But I think the biggest deficit is really respect what this world somehow more need.

Where this will end?

- That I fight with the next soft-drink automatatic machine gimme the juice, but it replys with: Sorry, you are classified as coffeine addict, is there something wrong that you don't like a coke now?

[D1N]

This is an interesting article, primarily due to the fact that they are using something similar to a rootkit which would constitute as malice software. A few things that come to mind when I think about this...

Can we expect Anti Virus companies to define these applications as malicious software and develop updates for Anti Virus products?

It would nice to see OpenRCE or anyone really in our community reverse engineer this software to expose it and possibly develop a fix or patch that will remove it.

What methods of delivery are being deployed for this "rootkit" ?

I love you all and I apologize before hand for quoting the Register but much the information is still unavailable regarding the methods the German Government is using so I must use the information that in front of me to base my opinions.

Germany floats Trojan for terror suspects

Baldrick-style cunning plan

By John Leyden → More by this author

Published Monday 3rd September 2007 13:13 GMT

German politicians have defended plans to email Trojan banana software to terror suspects in the hopes of monitoring their conversations.

The Register mentions one form of propagation for spreading this backdoor - email... So if they already have email addresses to the "known terrorists" or "suspects" why not just use some diplomacy and due process to get a warrant to access email remotely? Oh that's right... They want access to the physical host not their email. So it would be safe to say that they figure email is the simplest form of transport.

Now something else comes to mind here. If the German Government sends email containing malicious software across several hops that must pass through several nodes via the Internet. Then surely they must notify each proxy that packets containing malicious software are going from point (a) to point (.

So if this information is included in TCP headers and is being passed through several networks then who governs the safety of the transport? What's happens if an email ends up going to the wrong recipient / destination?

An innocent user unknowingly exposes himself or herself and their privacy to some "security experts" working for the German Government and it's predecessors... What will they do with this information? I'm sure they don't plan on recycling it in their trash bin. The damage is already done. The innocent user's privacy has already been violated and just because they are not aware of such a thing does not make it acceptable to anyone anywhere in the world. All people have basic human rights and those rights should be defended and protected at any cost.

Yes it's always an innocent user that gets affected it happens every time methods like this are used.

Teddy was joking around but he makes a great point what exactly do they hope to find by developing and deploying malware to anyone they see as a terrorist?

Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble is seeking police powers to harness malware in upcoming federal security laws. AP reports that snoopware would be developed by the German government rather than existing commercial software.

Oh so were calling it "snoopware" now. I just love all these cute little names.. Oh its nothing more than snooping... That's all.

Last time I checked snooping -> disregard for privacy

is this what PEiD will name the executable's signature?

readme.exe -> snoopware [overlay] | developed in Visual Basic

and McAfee -> NewWin32.snoop.Gov?

Would-be terrorists need only use Ubuntu Linux to avoid the ploy. And even if they stuck with Windows their anti-virus software might detect the malware. Anti-virus firms that accede to law enforcement demands to turn a blind eye to state-sanctioned malware risk undermining trust in their software, as similar experience in the US has shown.

Yeah that's going to save you just use Ubuntu its solution to all of life's problems. I seriously doubt they are going to take the time to run ubuntu and apt-get install tor so they can be "anonymous" when they know just as well as the rest of us that half the tor servers out their are being run by the US Government. Not to mention that Linux users are vulnerable too. Their are plenty of rootkits and backdoors for Unix operating systems.

Once the malware gets into circulation there's no guarantee it won't be turned against innocent users.

Uh. yeah you think? So some cyber weenie at the German High Tech Crimes Unit can share nude photos of your wife and mine with his cyber pals at the department?

The whole concept is loaded with irony. For one thing, German government computers, like those in the UK before them, are currently under targeted Trojan assault. Meanwhile, recently introduced German legislation criminalises possession of hacking tools through vaguely worded measures that also appear to make network security tools illegal, though this is yet to be tested in court.

True... It's ok for the Government to use applications that we develop but if we share them amongst our friends and freely distribute them across the internet and test it's illegal...

I'm all for fighting terrorism and preserving the safety of innocent lives but their are other methods to do this (and they are being used) obviously not in Germany. Their will soon come a time when a lot more is exposed that will shock the human mind.

Malware, Backdoors, Rootkits etc... will soon reach beyond the "PC".

Propagation and spreading will evolve as well.

Edited September 6, 2007 by D1N