Live data from Hacker News

German Chaos Computer Club analyzes and releases government malware

ccc.de

41–50 of 67 posts

Re: German Chaos Computer Club analyzes and releases government malware

#41
post #39

Unfortunately, it is, it was and it will always be necessary to spy on people who are suspicious of committing a crime. Proper surveillance has saved uncountable lives. Years ago, police was using cameras and directional microphones. But as technology evolves, the methods to prevent crime have to envolve as well. To not allow the police to use the same technology as the criminals would actually endanger stability of…

  Proper surveillance has saved uncountable lives.
I hate to do this, but: citation needed. All the camera's in London have done nothing to reduce crime or increase the amount of crimes solved.

Re: German Chaos Computer Club analyzes and releases government malware

#42
post #39

Unfortunately, it is, it was and it will always be necessary to spy on people who are suspicious of committing a crime. Proper surveillance has saved uncountable lives. Years ago, police was using cameras and directional microphones. But as technology evolves, the methods to prevent crime have to envolve as well. To not allow the police to use the same technology as the criminals would actually endanger stability of…

  Personally, if you can get one pedophile or terrorist I
  wouldn't care if the whole police of Germany would share my
  Jena Jameson collection.
But what else are you willing to sacrifice to allow that? If you placed everyone under permanent house arrest you'd eliminate almost all crime. So why not do that?

Re: German Chaos Computer Club analyzes and releases government malware

#43
post #39

Unfortunately, it is, it was and it will always be necessary to spy on people who are suspicious of committing a crime. Proper surveillance has saved uncountable lives. Years ago, police was using cameras and directional microphones. But as technology evolves, the methods to prevent crime have to envolve as well. To not allow the police to use the same technology as the criminals would actually endanger stability of…

Proper surveillance has saved uncountable lives. I hate to do this, but: citation needed. All the camera's in London have done nothing to reduce crime or increase the amount of crimes solved.

I hate to do this, but I downvoted you because you demand evidence for one sweeping generalisation, and then proceed in the very next sentence to make a broad sweeping generalisation without providing any evidence.

I'm not saying I disagree with you, but if you are going to be confrontational then at least try not to be so blatantly hypocritical.

Re: German Chaos Computer Club analyzes and releases government malware

#44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Proper surveillance has saved uncountable lives. I hate to do this, but: citation needed. All the camera's in London have done nothing to reduce crime or increase the amount of crimes solved.

I hate to do this, but I downvoted you because you demand evidence for one sweeping generalisation, and then proceed in the very next sentence to make a broad sweeping generalisation without providing any evidence. I'm not saying I disagree with you, but if you are going to be confrontational then at least try not to be so blatantly hypocritical.

Well, I thought that fact was well known. It has been extensively covered by the media. [1][2][3]

[1] http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/05/londons_camera...

[2] http://articles.cnn.com/2010-02-25/opinion/schneier.security...

[3] http://www.google.nl/search?q=london+cameras+reduce+crime

Re: German Chaos Computer Club analyzes and releases government malware

#45
The title is a bit misleading. It seems this is a not a governmental malware to install on each citizen's PC. It's more a software installed on request by a judge for specific criminal cases. Looking a bit in IDA, the software is quite versatile and don't use any obfuscation techniques regularly seen in other malware. I suppose this is more and more used by the police because of the use of encryption on consumer products like Skype and other communication tools.

Re: German Chaos Computer Club analyzes and releases government malware

#46
post #40
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Opposed for historical reasons? The fact is that the citizens of Germany, and most other Western nations formerly known as the "free world" are today under more intense surveillance than the Stasi could have ever dreamed of. The German public in general is just mildly less apathetic about this as the rest of us. The only thing that makes a real difference in Germany is the constitutional court, that appears to suffer…

> [western world citizens] are today under more intense surveillance than the Stasi could have ever dreamed of [...] I keep hearing that, and I'm sorry, but it's pure sensationalist bullshit. At the end, the Stasi employed one secret informer per ~90 citizens (!), and one official employee per ~180 citizens. That was the (proportionally) biggest secret service that ever existed. The Stasi kept tabs on more or less an…

I think part of this is because nowadays it requires far fewer people to keep track of the population than it did back then.

Just mining Facebook and twitter will tell you what lots of people had for lunch...

Re: German Chaos Computer Club analyzes and releases government malware

#47
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ability of commercial anti-virus vendors to decide what end users are protected against is a good argument for open source anti-virus that crowdsources detection patterns.

This is a very good point. I have always been a bit sceptically on the anti-virus companies. The market looks a bit odd to me - different from many other software markets. A lot of regional market domination. Norton in the US, Kaspersky in the RU or ANTIVIR in GER. Looks almost like certain nations prefer having their "own" anti-virus company structures in place. Are there any serious anti-virus open source alternati…

New rule: get your AV solution from a country other than your own. That should cover most of those cases.

Re: German Chaos Computer Club analyzes and releases government malware

#49
post #39

Unfortunately, it is, it was and it will always be necessary to spy on people who are suspicious of committing a crime. Proper surveillance has saved uncountable lives. Years ago, police was using cameras and directional microphones. But as technology evolves, the methods to prevent crime have to envolve as well. To not allow the police to use the same technology as the criminals would actually endanger stability of…

Even the CCC agrees that wiretapping is necessary for catching criminals. They actually warned the police about the upcoming disclosure so that running investigations would not be jeopardized.

The issue here is that this malware obviously exceeds the limits that the German Federal Constitutional Court explicitly set for such tools.

For example, anyone can upload and run arbitrary files on the victim's computer - prosecutors but also anyone who knows the computer's IP address. This allows tampering with evidence.

Additionally, not only actual communication is captured but everything you do in a browser window, e.g., writing your diary on Google Docs. Obtaining such information would legally require a search warrant. This means that police can escalate their privileges without judicial oversight.

And finally, all captured information is sent to a server in the USA, clearly outside of German jurisdiction. Weakly encrypted. Together with the previously mentioned problems, this would allow the USA to ask the German police to monitor a suspected terrorist, then siphon off the wiretapping results and even place incriminating data on the victim's computer. Of course, the CIA would never do such a thing.

The question here is not whether the police may use wiretaps, the question is whether the police [1] may systematically break the law and lie to the public and courts about what they actually can do.

[1] of course, the police in this context means only certain representatives and departments.

Re: German Chaos Computer Club analyzes and releases government malware

#50
There is one more detail hinting that this could indeed be the "Bundestrojaner". faz[1] cites a leaked offer from a German company to the authorities that, according to faz, contains exactly the characteristics found by the CCC. Even renting an "intermediate" communications server in the USA is mentioned.

The especially striking thing about this trojan is the functionality to load additional modules and go far, far beyond simple wiring tapping of (otherwise encrypted) communications (at the source) - which was the only thing that was actually approved (and the reason for this software in the first place) and it was stated clearly that the software must NOT go beyond wire tapping and technical precautions have to be taken to prevent the software from doing anything else.

Furthermore CCC's analysis showed that the part of loading additional code was actually hidden, obfuscated and spread out amongst the machine code - whereas the rest of the code was very straight forward, no obfuscations. So clearly whoever developed that thing was very aware of how illegal and unlawful that functionality is.

[1] (in German) http://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/ein-amtlicher-trojaner...

Post reply on HN