CCC catches German state trojan

[K9 Kai Niggemann]

German hacker community CCC (Chaos Computer Club) have obtained a trojan program that is used by German police/Verfassungsschutz to spy on suspects.

they turn up that is is sloppily written, uses no encryption for the command-and-control part, creates a huge vulnerability for infected systems (that essentially anyone can exploit) and is able to load any software to the machine (something that was also ruled out by a court before).

The RootKit we call "Bundestrojaner" or "Staatstrojaner" can record Skype calls, take intervallic screenshots (illegal), keylog (illegal), use mic and camera to eavesdrop (illegal) and much more...

it's becoming a big stink since Spiegel has picked it up and keeps bouncing it back up to the main article on its online page:

http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/0,1518,790828,00.html

but also other (even the pretty conservative FAZ.net) are giving it lots of attention.

CCC says the trojan contains so many blatant stupidities that it should have been obvious to the office clerks of the quality control people. They also state that it's good news that no decent hacker is so free of ethics that s/he would work on that project and how the police had to resort to complete amateurs...

Meanwhile, the Pirate party is at 9% in the imaginary question: "who would you vote for if the election were next sunday"...

But will it go away? Am I too cynical when I think that it's just going to be more secretive from now on?


Kai

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