FBI Used Spyware for Online Search

juct writes "The FBI has used PC spyware for the first time to reveal the identity of an offender who sent bomb threats to a high school in Washington state. According to heise Security, a declaration from the FBI official who applied for the search warrant describes the mode of operation of the spyware which the FBI is using under the abbreviation CIPAV (Computer and Internet Protocol Address Verifier)."

How long will it be before...

[bconway]

the FBI (and some if-it-will-save-one-child-it-is-worth-it legislators) demand all the OS vendors to install backdoors so that it can come in and install whatever spyware it wants to be installed?

More Firefighters Needed!

[garcia]

It would seem that there's a kink [slashdot.org] in the Firehose [slashdot.org] again [slashdot.org].

Interesting speculation

[bconway]

The Feds would have the $$$ and be able to hire the skilled labor to build some pretty sophisticated spyware tools. On the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised to find out Microsoft included a back door in Windows. That rumor has surfaced before.

The problem with either of those options is if they get out in the wild. How many people have access to those tools and how is their deployment managed? Who wouldn't be tempted to do a little sideline testing if they had those goodies in their tool chest.

Re:The Problem

[Lisandro]

The barrier between man and machine is becoming much narrower. And that is a good thing. At the far end of the spectrum people have long been getting artificial hearing enhancers, and now we are starting on intelligent artificial eyes and limbs. People with epilepsy are getting electronics embedded in their brains. At the nearer end of the spectrum, a large percentage of the population now carries a small computer with them everywhere (their cell phone). The man/machine split is disappearing.

Fuck that. Sorry, but you guys (US citizens) should start to become really concerned about your government violating personal, constitutional-granted rights in order to further the fight against "terrorism". This issue is real NOW, and, from what we read here on the other side of the pond, it's becoming increasingly out of control. Who cares about future artificial limbs when these people decide it's ok to install malware in your PC so they can eavesdrop private, personal files and communications, today?

Re:Security through obscurity

[sumdumass]

If you have one thing that you don't want someone else to know about, you have something to hide. And this one thing doesn't have to be illegal or unethical either. as long as we have freedom, we are free to hide things.

Something to hide != guilty of a crime.

CIA

[AnyThingButWindows]

Running a comp repair shop I removed a Trojan that possibly came from the CIA. Breaking it down in HEX revealed that. It snooped IE cache, and was as easy to remove as running toolbarcop, then hijack this, then removing the binary manually. Dumped IE cache, then put the user on a cacheless firefox configuration. That fixed the problem.