StonyandCher writes "What is CIPAV? CIPAV stands for 'Computer and Internet Protocol Address Verifier'; a lengthy term for powerful spyware the Federal Bureau of Investigation can bring to bear on web-based crime. It was used last month in a case where someone was emailing bomb threats regularly to a Washington high school. An affidavit by an FBI agent revealed some of the workings of CIPAV. 'According to the court filing, this is [some of] what the CIPAV collects from the infected computer: IP address, Media Access Control address for the network card, List of open TCP and UDP ports, List of running programs ... Last visited URL. Once that initial inventory is conducted, the CIPAV slips into the background and silently monitors all outbound communication, logging every IP address to which the computer connects, and time and date stamping each.' In a Computerworld article, the author attempts to dissect CIPAV's purpose and raises a number of questions such as: What happens to the data the CIPAV collects? Does the CIPAV capture keystrokes? Can the CIPAV spread on its own to other computers, either purposefully or by accident? Does it erase itself after its job is done?"
What happens to the data the CIPAV collects? Does the CIPAV capture keystrokes? Can the CIPAV spread on its own to other computers, either purposefully or by accident? Does it erase itself after its job is done?"
Does it run on Linux?
sorry, couldn't help myself.... but seriously..... does it?
Even if it does, if you find one of those last-generation Motorola 68000 machines and compile your entire OS from scratch I doubt that they'll have a binary-compatible version to install on it...
Of course, be prepared to have one SETI@Home packet take about four weeks to process, and to have a bogomips rating of something like 16.9...
Mod parent down. SELinux is support for more fine-grained rights management in Linux. It's a mandatory access control policy system, basically. Unless parent has proof that there is a back door in there somewhere, I'm pretty sure parent is full of it.
Just because the software is partially paid for by the government, it does not necessarily follow that it's a back door. Take off the tinfoil hat.
What happens when zombied computers are used to email such threats? who gets the blame in that case? How do you distinguish the innocent zombied-user from the trojan or virus? Would being infected constitute defense? If so, how do you prove intent??
So many questions raised by this... I'm sure others can think of many more.
How do you prove that you're the innocent victim of a zombie installer, vs. having surreptitiously zombied your own machine? the installer works the same way regardless, and ISTM it's not too difficult to determine and target your own IP address. (Or for that matter, for the gov't to do so.)
Point being, I'm wondering just how solid this evidence really would be in the eyes of the courts, with or without tech-savvy judges and lawyers.
I was referring more to the question of how the FBI installs the software on your machine. For some reason picturing a guy in a black suit wearing dark sunglasses sending "OMG Pony Screensaver Inside!!1" emails doesn't cut it. If they're going for computer evidence, it seems likely that their targets would be a bit more computer literate: more up to date on patches, firewalls, etc.
Otherwise, who knows. Maybe their software has to wipe out other possible malware to be effective (wouldn't want that data they're collecting, or even the software they installed going overseas, right?). You'd hope that they would have to show that it was someone typing out the emails locally vs. remotely. But then, who's to say it wasn't the person's little brother writing the email? It doesn't seem like they'd have a lot to stand on...there should be a lot of supporting evidence going with what they collect with that software.
But in the end, don't they pretty much just have to say "We're the FBI. That's what happened." anyway?
Why would they need to erase it? how could you prove they didn't delete it?
I remember sitting in a Computer Law class in the early 80s. One of the things which arose (aside from writing briefs which the chair from the department and a group of landsharks would pick pieces apart & continue until it looked reasonable) One of the things discussed at that time was you could force the FBI to ensure your information is c
Another worry is if someone finds it, how good precautions are there that it's immune to subversion, in multiple ways:
Sending false data to the feds. With my knowledge of the bureau, I doubt they would ever question the data they receive. (The healthy paranoid people who might ask questions either get fired, or end up in different government branches).
Using the app or information in it to launch an attack to the fed's own clandestine systems. This could include modifying the data sent to try to trigger a buffer over/underflow, or simply brute force DoS the target destination through a botnet.
If it contains backdoor functionality, replace it with a honeypot and gain access to passwords and client info of the feds trying to access it.
Modifying the app too send data not to the feds but to somewhere else. This would be the holy grail of trojans, as it's likely that most AV software have specific exceptions for ignoring software from the government.
I'm sure they've accounted for the possibilities you've raised (excellent points, by the way.) And, if you were to actually ask the FBI about those issues, I'm sure the conversation would go something like this:
Brody: The CIPAV is a source of unspeakable power and it has to be researched!
Eaton: And it will be, I assure you Dr. Brody, Dr. Jones. We have top men working on it right now.
Let's up the ante and get this thing going - I'll throw in $10 to the first slashdotter who contains and publishes the 'bins' and/or reverse engineers this piece of code. $20 if you can isolate the signature of executables that it's binded to with a high degree of success (say, =>75% confidence). It's $10 well spent to sleep at night, IMO. I kinda' want to play with this thing and I'm willing to fund the hunt for it. Anyone else wanna' throw in?
I did read the article, but did not see anything about identification.
Other than ensuring there is no spyware running on your machine, anyone have an idea how to detect this particular program?
Well, there are some ways. Some of them used by trojans, some used by AV kits, some by both.
You can go ahead and force every program you run to load a DLL of yours, which hooks the relevant calls and alerts you should an application that's not supposed to tries to access things it has no business in. At least that's how I did it.
It does slow the system down considerably, though, so you might want to use it on a separate machine (real or VM) that you use to do your internet stuff.
It most do a trace route/phone home or somthing to actually get a useful address
As opposed to the guy at 127.0.0.1! I hacked into his machine once, but that bastard had some sort of active defense daemon running that wiped my drive at the same time I was trying to wipe his!
Fortunately, I was able to see the porno pics of his wife before I was hit. Man! That bitch was FUGLY!
The core problem is, surprisingly, its correlation with antivirus tools.
Either the feds don't give AV vendors a heads-up when they plan to use a trojan, i.e. they risk being found. Now, this would double as the "hey stoopid, the feds are onto you" warning.
So it's likely they do require AV vendors to avoid finding them. This, in turn, would mean, though, that all a potential virus writer has to do is to get his program to match the fed trojan in behaviour and shape, possibly in signature.
I needn't write more, I guess? Why bother coming up with a rootkit if there are governmental-assisted ways to create undetectable malware?
The AV could just take the middle ground with a generic description like "Suspicious Program: E-card Viewer", it is unlikely it will display as "W.32CIPAV j00 R SO FEDERALLY PWNED"
By the time you've detected it, it's probably already reported everything. IP, MAC, IP address and HTTP request of last packet to ports 80 (or possibly 443 if it gets its information before the SSL encryption), etc. is not difficult nor time consuming to figure out.
it is unlikely it will display as "W.32CIPAV j00 R SO FEDERALLY PWNED"
No, but that would be awsome. Maybe some of the open source antivirus kits out there (I know there's at least one) should use that as the name if they ever manage to get a signature of CIPAV.
Dunno if that plays a role for Vista, but XP doesn't care too much about what's signed how, anything may be and actually is checked by pretty much every AV kit I know.
Besides, that only serves as a better way to detect it. I give it 2 days 'til the first detector circulates that looks for exactly THIS crypto key signature.
Baloney. You are referring to the NSAKEY [wikipedia.org] and it is not about executable signing, because until Vista+TPM there was no mechanism for executable signing and authentication in MS Windows.
One of the differences between the virus that your bog-standard AV will detect and this critter from the FBI is the number of instances out there in the wild. Keep in mind that this FBI thing is intentionally sent to specific targets, and I suspect that it is used sparingly in order to prevent it from being found easily.
Nearly all AV programs rely on signatures. The way they obtain the signatures is first to obtain samples, and then determine how they can identify the program accurately (Hashes, etc). I've discovered new malware and forwarded it to the proper channels, as have others that I know.
Therefore, the following (simplified) steps must occur:
1. become infected with the malware 2. suspect that the machine is infected 3. correctly isolate the malware (find its parts, etc)
Then, once those happen one must also do the following in order to hope that protection will be offered to others:
4. send the sample to one or more anti-malware application support teams for inclusion 5. wait until the AV/AM team can create a signature 6. wait until the AV/AM team distribute the signature 7. wait until people update their AV/AM signature databases.
As you can see, there are several places where this process can fail. Think of it like phishing, but sort of in reverse. Phishers send out a large number of messages in hope that even if only a very small percentage of recipients (1/100th of one percent, for example) fall for it, they will be able to profit.
That works just fine if you send out a few hundred thousand messages.
If you send out only one message, or ten, or twenty, your odds are very close to zero that even one person will "bite".
This is the critical difference. I doubt that this program is out there on thousands of machines, or hundreds of thousands of machines all over the place. It is "placed" (I know - some victim effort is required) on specific machines.
Therefore you have a very small victim base. The odds of this being discovered are quite small, even without collusion from the AV vendors.
This is more like "spearphishing" (who dreams up these phrases?), being specially targeted for one individual. This increases the odds of that one individual falling for the ruse, and since only one person was the target, this works well.
Things like this make the lives of us who work in security full time much more complicated.
AV programs are amongst the most reversed programs in existance. Malware writers spend hours, days and weeks dissecting AV tools and finding weaknesses in them. I think it's fairly secure to assume that one of them would have used a security hole like this in the meantime, e.g. by rewriting the hosts-file, then sending to the (rerouted) cipav.fbi.gov and the AV tool would let it be.
And this, in turn, would have been detected immediately by an AV company (who is competing with the AV company that lets this le
If they have this amazing tool for tracking people down, do they still get spam at HQ? If so, why not use this to catch the spammers and make them stop? Is it because they're all beyond jurisdiction now?
In the grand scheme of things, spam doesn't rate very high when compared to a bomb threat. Resource limitations dictate that the FBI concentrate on music downloading, bomb threats, and spam, in that order;)...
MySpace accounts can't receive traditional e-mail, so one hacker standard -- attach the CIPAV to a message and hope the recipient is stupid enough to launch it -- wasn't available. Instead, the most likely tactic would have been to send a URL to the suspect account using MySpace's own instant messaging and/or Web mail system. If the suspect clicked on the link -- it would have had to be enticing, so use your imagination here -- and visited the FBI-owned malicious site, an exploit for a zero-day vulnerabilit
Thats why I have always disagreed with the current policy, not because I support the vile people that create such images, but I fear that it would be too easy to frame some one who is innocent. There is this Japanese urban legend that when a corporation or Yakuza wants to off someone, they have the sucker win a trip to Indonesia. Then at the airport they slip some drugs in his bag and then give an anonymous tip to the Indonesian authorities.
The thing is... The penalty for drug possession in Indonesia is deat
How, exactly, do the Men In Black install this uber-spyware on a target system?
Do they get a warrant, sneak into your home in the dead of night, and install software on your computer?
Do they mail it to you as a virus, perhaps cleverly disguised as a Nigerian spam scam?
Do they use the back door that Microsoft agreed to put in all their software in return for being granted Most-Favored Monopoly status by the government?
Or something else? "You are a suspected pedophile. To clear your name, please click here to install the FBI's internet spyware on your computer"?
Maybe it's just a variant of the way MPack infects. Slipping code into inconspicuous pages, redirecting you to an iframe containing an exploit, suitable for your browser, and presto.
Do they get a warrant, sneak into your home in the dead of night, and install software on your computer?
You still think they would need a warrant to do so? It is more like: try{ getTarget().addUncostitutionalSpyware(); } catch (SomebodyFoundOutException e){ getTarget().accuse( new Excuse( Excuse.paedophile , Excuse.terrorist )); } finally{ profit(); }
That depends on whether they're in the USA or not. If you're in the USA, enjoy your stay at the Gitmo Hilton. If you're not, well, you might not be bothered at all, but don't fly to the USA. Ever.
That depends on whether they're in the USA or not. If you're in the USA, enjoy your stay at the Gitmo Hilton. If you're not, well, you might not be bothered at all, but don't fly to the USA.
Yeah, because the US government has never grabbed someone who is on foreign soil and whisked them away in an airplane late at night when nobody was looking. (No, really [usatoday.com].)
If they want you bad enough, they will send someone to retrieve you. Domestic and international laws be damned. Now, they won't do it for sending spa
There are many programs out there, such as LittleSnitch for Mac, which are rather adamant about making sure you know everything that is phoning home on your computer. Does the CIPAV have a method of circumventing these road blocks or would the FBI be stumped by the same software that is intended to keep computers safe from malicious software? While I could certainly understand them working with larger developers like Symantec and Microsoft to ensure that their anti-spyware and virus protection software dutifully ignores a product like CIPAV, what about machines running protection applications from smaller developers, or even open source protection, like the ClamAV project?
Better yet, if programs like CIPAV become more common as a tool for Federal Investigations, does it become a requirement that said programs allow CIPAV and its successors to do their work?
Also (sorry to double post, but this just came to mind), what happens if it is blockable. Does using the software to prevent CIPAV from calling home constitute a felony for disrupting a Federal investigation?
Or, what happens in the case of a rebuild? Is that also considered to be messing with a Federal Investigation if the target is unaware that they are being monitored?
If AV companies do let the FBI version go through unchecked, what if the virus and worm writers of today get a hold of this and modify it for their own purposes?
...Monday, June 18. On July 15, after he pleaded guilty in juvenile court to charges of identity theft and making bomb threats, the teen was sentenced to 90 days' detention.
They spent a log of money on that. Sounds to me like it was actually a "test run" to make sure things work as expected. And now that they know it will work...
Don't use a MS Windows based OS if you want to do stupid stuff. Odds are that these type of government programs are only targeting the large user base of MS Windows. Use Linux, *BSD or Mac OS X and flip the government the birdie!;-)
Linux is open source, how exactly would they have an "unpublished" exploit? There are a lot more people looking for bugs for Linux than the FBI have searching Linux for some exploit they could take advantage of. Oh, and the FBI would only be able to use a exploit they found first for a few times before it is patched and all through the Linux Community.
As for MS Windows, if there is an unknown exploit, maybe MS would leave it there with a little nudge and wink from the FBI?
Specifically, it looks like the FBI may have several ready-made exploits, each targeting a different OS/web browser combination. An interesting question, then, is what they would do if they encountered a system that is fully patched and running a more secure browser such as Firefox. Does the FBI have access to their own zero-day exploits that they can whip out to install this trojan? If so, is it possible they have their own team of hackers set out to find such exploits?
does it... (Score:5, Interesting)
Does it run on Linux?
sorry, couldn't help myself.... but seriously..... does it?
Re:does it... (Score:5, Funny)
"Mr. Gman from Quantico, VA has sent you an eGreetingCard from Flowers By Irene! Just open this P.D.F. file to view..."
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, be prepared to have one SETI@Home packet take about four weeks to process, and to have a bogomips rating of something like 16.9...
Re:does it... (Score:4, Informative)
My Sparc Classic would takes minutes to establish an SSH2 connection. those big keys take a while, SSH1 was nice and fast. (50MHz no cache, no FPU)
Parent
Let's check... (Score:5, Funny)
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
E: Couldn't find package cipav
Whew, safe!
Parent
Re:does it... (Score:5, Insightful)
Mod parent down. SELinux is support for more fine-grained rights management in Linux. It's a mandatory access control policy system, basically. Unless parent has proof that there is a back door in there somewhere, I'm pretty sure parent is full of it.
Just because the software is partially paid for by the government, it does not necessarily follow that it's a back door. Take off the tinfoil hat.
Parent
Re:does it... (Score:4, Funny)
oh no - it's going to have Ajax and a drop shadow!
Parent
What about zombies? (Score:5, Insightful)
So many questions raised by this... I'm sure others can think of many more.
Re:What about zombies? (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re: (Score:3)
Point being, I'm wondering just how solid this evidence really would be in the eyes of the courts, with or without tech-savvy judges and lawyers.
Re:What about zombies? (Score:4, Interesting)
Otherwise, who knows. Maybe their software has to wipe out other possible malware to be effective (wouldn't want that data they're collecting, or even the software they installed going overseas, right?). You'd hope that they would have to show that it was someone typing out the emails locally vs. remotely. But then, who's to say it wasn't the person's little brother writing the email? It doesn't seem like they'd have a lot to stand on...there should be a lot of supporting evidence going with what they collect with that software.
But in the end, don't they pretty much just have to say "We're the FBI. That's what happened." anyway?
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
1) re: duration of evidence kept:
This is either a troll or a rhetorical question.
Why would they need to erase it? how could you prove they didn't delete it?
I remember sitting in a Computer Law class in the early 80s. One of the things which arose (aside from writing briefs which the chair from the department and a group of landsharks would pick pieces apart & continue until it looked reasonable) One of the things discussed at that time was you could force the FBI to ensure your information is c
Zombie or not, one specimen WILL be found. (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Brody: The CIPAV is a source of unspeakable power and it has to be researched!
Eaton: And it will be, I assure you Dr. Brody, Dr. Jones. We have top men working on it right now.
Jones: Who?
Eaton: Top men.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's up the ante and get this thing going - I'll throw in $10 to the first slashdotter who contains and publishes the 'bins' and/or reverse engineers this piece of code. $20 if you can isolate the signature of executables that it's binded to with a high degree of success (say, =>75% confidence). It's $10 well spent to sleep at night, IMO. I kinda' want to play with this thing and I'm willing to fund the hunt for it. Anyone else wanna' throw in?
How to identify? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You can go ahead and force every program you run to load a DLL of yours, which hooks the relevant calls and alerts you should an application that's not supposed to tries to access things it has no business in. At least that's how I did it.
It does slow the system down considerably, though, so you might want to use it on a separate machine (real or VM) that you use to do your internet stuff.
address is 192.168.0.100 (Score:4, Funny)
It most do a trace route/phone home or somthing to actually get a useful address
Yes... millions of taxpayer dollars have been... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:address is 192.168.0.100 (Score:5, Funny)
It most do a trace route/phone home or somthing to actually get a useful address
As opposed to the guy at 127.0.0.1! I hacked into his machine once, but that bastard had some sort of active defense daemon running that wiped my drive at the same time I was trying to wipe his!
Fortunately, I was able to see the porno pics of his wife before I was hit. Man! That bitch was FUGLY!
Parent
The real threat of "government spyware" (Score:5, Interesting)
Either the feds don't give AV vendors a heads-up when they plan to use a trojan, i.e. they risk being found. Now, this would double as the "hey stoopid, the feds are onto you" warning.
So it's likely they do require AV vendors to avoid finding them. This, in turn, would mean, though, that all a potential virus writer has to do is to get his program to match the fed trojan in behaviour and shape, possibly in signature.
I needn't write more, I guess? Why bother coming up with a rootkit if there are governmental-assisted ways to create undetectable malware?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:The real threat of "government spyware" (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
No, but that would be awsome. Maybe some of the open source antivirus kits out there (I know there's at least one) should use that as the name if they ever manage to get a signature of CIPAV.
Re: (Score:2)
Besides, that only serves as a better way to detect it. I give it 2 days 'til the first detector circulates that looks for exactly THIS crypto key signature.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:The real threat of "government spyware" (Score:4, Informative)
One of the differences between the virus that your bog-standard AV will detect and this critter from the FBI is the number of instances out there in the wild. Keep in mind that this FBI thing is intentionally sent to specific targets, and I suspect that it is used sparingly in order to prevent it from being found easily.
Nearly all AV programs rely on signatures. The way they obtain the signatures is first to obtain samples, and then determine how they can identify the program accurately (Hashes, etc). I've discovered new malware and forwarded it to the proper channels, as have others that I know.
Therefore, the following (simplified) steps must occur:
1. become infected with the malware
2. suspect that the machine is infected
3. correctly isolate the malware (find its parts, etc)
Then, once those happen one must also do the following in order to hope that protection will be offered to others:
4. send the sample to one or more anti-malware application support teams for inclusion
5. wait until the AV/AM team can create a signature
6. wait until the AV/AM team distribute the signature
7. wait until people update their AV/AM signature databases.
As you can see, there are several places where this process can fail. Think of it like phishing, but sort of in reverse. Phishers send out a large number of messages in hope that even if only a very small percentage of recipients (1/100th of one percent, for example) fall for it, they will be able to profit.
That works just fine if you send out a few hundred thousand messages.
If you send out only one message, or ten, or twenty, your odds are very close to zero that even one person will "bite".
This is the critical difference. I doubt that this program is out there on thousands of machines, or hundreds of thousands of machines all over the place. It is "placed" (I know - some victim effort is required) on specific machines.
Therefore you have a very small victim base. The odds of this being discovered are quite small, even without collusion from the AV vendors.
This is more like "spearphishing" (who dreams up these phrases?), being specially targeted for one individual. This increases the odds of that one individual falling for the ruse, and since only one person was the target, this works well.
Things like this make the lives of us who work in security full time much more complicated.
-Q
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I think it's fairly secure to assume that one of them would have used a security hole like this in the meantime, e.g. by rewriting the hosts-file, then sending to the (rerouted) cipav.fbi.gov and the AV tool would let it be.
And this, in turn, would have been detected immediately by an AV company (who is competing with the AV company that lets this le
Nice acronym but... (Score:5, Funny)
Do they still get spam? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Do they still get spam? (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
So, if you're a criminal.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
There is this Japanese urban legend that when a corporation or Yakuza wants to off someone, they have the sucker win a trip to Indonesia. Then at the airport they slip some drugs in his bag and then give an anonymous tip to the Indonesian authorities.
The thing is... The penalty for drug possession in Indonesia is deat
But how do they install it?!?! (Score:5, Interesting)
Do they get a warrant, sneak into your home in the dead of night, and install software on your computer?
Do they mail it to you as a virus, perhaps cleverly disguised as a Nigerian spam scam?
Do they use the back door that Microsoft agreed to put in all their software in return for being granted Most-Favored Monopoly status by the government?
Or something else? "You are a suspected pedophile. To clear your name, please click here to install the FBI's internet spyware on your computer"?
Anyone know?
Re:But how do they install it?!?! (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
try{
getTarget().addUncostitutionalSpyware();
}
catch (SomebodyFoundOutException e){
getTarget().accuse( new Excuse( Excuse.paedophile , Excuse.terrorist ));
}
finally{
profit();
}
Better question (Score:4, Interesting)
5 bucks says they get a visit from big men in serious black suits and then are never seen again.
Re:Better question (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, because the US government has never grabbed someone who is on foreign soil and whisked them away in an airplane late at night when nobody was looking. (No, really [usatoday.com].)
If they want you bad enough, they will send someone to retrieve you. Domestic and international laws be damned. Now, they won't do it for sending spa
Is this really a reliable tool for the FBI? (Score:5, Interesting)
Better yet, if programs like CIPAV become more common as a tool for Federal Investigations, does it become a requirement that said programs allow CIPAV and its successors to do their work?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
What happens to the data collected? (Score:3, Funny)
Duh.
I wouldn't mind running this (Score:2)
What if Crackers modify it for themselves? (Score:4, Interesting)
what if the virus and worm writers of today get a hold of this and modify it for their own purposes?
A lot of effort for 90 days detention. (Score:4, Insightful)
They spent a log of money on that. Sounds to me like it was actually a "test run" to make sure things work as expected. And now that they know it will work...
Hey, this is no fair. (Score:4, Funny)
Moral to this story? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
As for MS Windows, if there is an unknown exploit, maybe MS would leave it there with a little nudge and wink from the FBI?
As for OS X, the core is op
Some More Speculation on Installation Methods (Score:5, Interesting)
http://blog.misec.net/2007/07/31/3/ [misec.net]
Specifically, it looks like the FBI may have several ready-made exploits, each targeting a different OS/web browser combination. An interesting question, then, is what they would do if they encountered a system that is fully patched and running a more secure browser such as Firefox. Does the FBI have access to their own zero-day exploits that they can whip out to install this trojan? If so, is it possible they have their own team of hackers set out to find such exploits?