User Panel
Posted: 12/13/2001 11:54:50 PM EDT
Microsoft, cDc and FBI Cut a Deal: FBI Surveillance Software
to be Part of Windows XP Updates By John Robbington 13-12-2001 The controversy, rumours and speculation surrounding the FBI's Magic Lantern tool has attracted ridicule from the internet underground. Not so any more. Now both the infamous hacker group the Cult of the Dead Cow (cDc) and Microsoft have offered a helping hand to the Feds and are preparing to include the surveillance software in all future editions and updates of the new Microsoft Windows XP operating system. "This Magic Langern could easily become a part of Windows XP Dynamic Updates, or even become a standard part of the operating system." Microsoft spokesperson Bob Null said. "We are really looking forward to experimenting this on a large scale. Our direct Marketing department was jumping out of their pants when they heard we would be doing this." As well they should. - The dream of both direct marketers and FBI coming both true at the same time. Also to be included in the future Microsoft Windows XP (R) are Microsoft's trademark profiling software meant for tracking individual users: See: Microsoft licenses profiling software for digital TV [http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/22/23318.html] Microsoft's New Technology enables the FBI to profile individuals through their viewing habits and so provide FBI with useful information about potential terrorists and other criminals. Both Microsoft and FBI point out that individual profiles are not given a name and that the information is stored on the FBI government computers only and not on public computers. But this holds little sway with privacy advocates. Predictive, a Microsoft partner in this venture, has also filed a patent for a biometric system which identifies different individuals within the same household. The system works on recognising people's keystroke, mouse or remote-control usage patterns. It says that it generates random, perfect IDs each time, which have the effect of identifying all the household's PC users, even if they didn't write anything that would otherwise indicate to FBI and Microsoft who is using the computer. Andy Beers, senior product manager for Microsoft said of the deal: "Predictive Networks' solutions will provide customers of Microsoft with state-of-the-art software to understand suspected terrorists' characteristics and interests. The result will be the technology and expertise needed to make thought police operation a seamless reality for the consumer, while enabling incrementally criminalizing various aspects of file swapping terrorist hunts within the United States and abroad." [ meaning more targetted marketing and spam - rf] |
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(continued)
Evidently still grizzled about the fact that their security is too bad to afford any real protection, Microsoft has withheld the publishing of a notorious security track record, that of Microsoft being the most often penetrated OS of the Millennium. Reid Fleming, a cDc member and now a secret Microsoft employee, said: "Never before has the US faced a more troublesome enemy. To meet this growing challenge, the FBI has announced an ongoing effort to create and deploy best-of-breed electronic surveillance software. "While we applaud the innovation and drive of the federal law enforcement agency, those of us who are US citizens would be remiss if we did not offer our expertise in this area." A tongue in cheek announcement from the group claims that cDc "has more targeted experience than anyone else in this field". And they're right. Their Back Orifice would do the Magic Lantern job beautifully. Although the hackers are quite confident that the Microsoft and FBI's Engineering Research Facility is more than capable, cDc intends to re-architect Back Orifice from the ground up. "There will be absolutely no shared code between the two projects, in order to skirt detection by commercial antivirus packages. The code will remain totally secret. The software will never surface publicly. And it will be far more stealthy than anything we have ever released, demonstrated or publicly discussed," the group said. Indeed, the central design principle of Magic Lantern and this new breed of Back Orifice could easily be interpreted as "an artificial witness which is capable of intercepting any and all relevant activity during, after and even leading up to the commission of a computer crime", it added. The cDc concluded that the project would deliver "the ultimate intelligence gathering tool to the govenrment. And we intend to construct it, at no cost, exclusively for the use of Microsoft and the federal government," said Fleming. "We are confident that Microsoft and the government will limit the use of this technology only to targets relevant to legitimate investigations," he added, further underscoring the cult's faith in federal law enforcement organisations. "The FBI has a long history of following Title 18 to the letter." ------------- Haha! They will follow title 18 just as well as Louis Freeh did when he was pushing for gun control in violation of federal law that forbids the FBI from doing political campaigning. |
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Three things come to mind:
1. No more searching for bomb making sights 2. Lots more spam mail. 3. Lots more reforming of harddrive. F-them Linux anyone??? Sgtar15 |
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Microsoft's New Technology enables the FBI to profile individuals through their viewing habits and so provide FBI with useful information about potential terrorists and [b]other criminals[/b]. View Quote Where does it stop? I guess you shouldn't look for DSS hack cards on the internet (that's illegal). |
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How many available OS's are there besides XP? Is this a campaign to make people NOT buy XP?
My thought is that people won't care. Remember that hoax email that claims that microsoft could track who forwarded an email, and you would get 5 dollars for every person you forwarded it to? I told people time and time again that it is a hoax, that they won't get any money, just waste bandwidth. All that did was get me removed from mailing lists, because the ignorant people will continue their feel good activities even when the truth has been set right in front of them. |
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I met the guys from the Cult of the Dead Cow a number of years ago and it doesn't seem like this is something they would do. They've gone commercial and might have sold their souls to the man. They're will be plenty of ways to block this type of software when it's needed.
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The article is suspect based on the number of spelling errors alone.
Several years ago there were articles about Windows having built-in back doors for NSA (makes you wonder, considering how much competitive intel MS had available) I'm using XP now and I have to tell you, I REALLY like it. Much better than 98. |
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Quoted: Do you have the link for this article? View Quote Ditto...Who is By John Robbington? I'm a ... Microsoft Certified Partner Microsoft Certified Solution Developer Microsoft Developer Network Universal Subscriber Microsoft Visual Studio.NET Beta Tester I'm not saying this is BS, but I've never heard of this before and I'm very active in the MS Developer Community. I sure this issue would have been raised (exploded?) in one of the newsgroups or mailing lists I'm on. ChrisG |
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I think its all BS.
We read too many Tom Clancy novels. "Magic Lamp" is a lot of hooey. Look at it this way. The Feds have virtually unlimited access to every form of information transfer there is on the the planet. And for all that, look at how [b]piddling little[/b] has come of the 9/11 investigation!!!! And they still have no clue about who sent the anthrax letters. The idea that some limited number of Fed agents are going to monitor the activities of 100+ million active Internet users in this country is [i][b]LUDICROUS![/i][/b] I think people forget how big the number 1 million is. I no longer give a crap about privacy concerns. I'm a law abiding citizen. I'll continue to hang around gun sites and conservative oriented stuff all I want. The idea that I'm going to show-up on the Feds radar is patently ridiculous. [b]The Feds can't even permanently shut down the mafia.[/b] The whole thing makes me far more concerned that I, as a citizen, must do more than ever to protect myself and my family. Because the Feds track record in the "war on terrorism" is pretty poor. We have more to fear from Islamic terrorists than the Feds admit. |
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Quoted: Quoted: Do you have the link for this article? View Quote Ditto...Who is By John Robbington? I'm a ... Microsoft Certified Partner Microsoft Certified Solution Developer Microsoft Developer Network Universal Subscriber Microsoft Visual Studio.NET Beta Tester I'm not saying this is BS, but I've never heard of this before and I'm very active in the MS Developer Community. I sure this issue would have been raised (exploded?) in one of the newsgroups or mailing lists I'm on. ChrisG View Quote I very much agree with Chris. I am a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE) 2K, and I think this is Bull Shit (BS). Oh well... Tyler |
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If the bad guys used Public Library computers
to access the Internet, then WTF? It's like making a bomb threat from a phone booth, did you catch the guy? No, by the time we got there he was already gone. But we only missed him by an hour or so. I bet we would never hear that from the government. What?? Who?? Your kidding me?? I see no practical use for such a program but to spy on the good people of the United States and then you may as well throw the Constitution out the window. |
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it doesn't seem like this is something they [cDc] would do View Quote Except as a sarcastic gesture. It makes sense if you think of it as their demonstration of Windows insecurity. "Magic Lamp" is a lot of hooey. View Quote Considering that several major news networks have run stories on it and the FBI has confirmed its existence, I don't think it is "hooey."z |
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THE CULT OF THE DEAD COW OFFERS A HELPING HAND IN AMERICA'S TIME OF NEED
In an effort to turn the tide in the war on terrorism, a private-sector think tank offers its expertise to the FBI. LUBBOCK, TX, November 26 -- Never before has the United States faced a more troublesome enemy. To meet this growing challenge, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has announced an ongoing effort to create and deploy best-of-breed electronic surveillance software. In July 2000 the FBI unveiled Carnivore (now called the DCS-1000), a sniffer capable of plucking relevant packet headers out of live data streams. To augment the investigative value of the DCS-1000, last week the FBI announced the development of "Magic Lantern", a rootkit for gathering information on target computers. According to all accounts, this represents a major leap forward in the fight against all forms of computer crime. But we in the CULT OF THE DEAD COW (cDc) believe that there are opportunities here for public/private sector synergy. "While we applaud the innovation and drive of the federal law enforcement agency, those of us who are U.S. citizens would be remiss if we did not offer our expertise in this area." said Reid Fleming, a cDc member. The CULT OF THE DEAD COW has more targeted experience than anyone else in this field. We have repeatedly demonstrated our long-term commitment to this technology area with the release of the original Back Orifice in 1998, and its successor, Back Orifice 2000. We are quite confident that the FBI's Engineering Research Facility is more than capable of ramping up on the challenges posed by this new arena of surveillance. But we are in a unique position to assist them in their new mission. For our part, conceptual work has already begun on an all-new remote administration tool focused specifically on the needs of the law enforcement community. So we intend to re-architect Back Orifice from the ground up. There will be absolutely no shared code between the two projects, in order to skirt detection by commercial antivirus packages. The code will remain totally secret. The software will never surface publicly. And it will be far more stealthy than anything we have ever released, demoed, or publicly discussed. It will contain roughly the functionality of the current Back Orifice 2000 product, plus many new features. The central design principle is to create an artificial witness which is capable of intercepting any and all relevant activity during, after, and even leading up to the commission of a computer crime. ---more--- |
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The new system will be designed to guard against internet fraud, identity theft, unauthorized system access, virus writing, industrial espionage, child pornography, information warfare, public corruption, composing hate speech, and other serious felonies which threaten the security of our nation and the safety of its citizens.
To avoid becoming obsolete, the proposed system will be expandable through the use of plug-in components. This will enable rapid development of new operating system ports, as well as entirely new features. Several plug-ins are already under consideration or active development: IMAGE ANALYZERS for recognizing certain shapes and images in digital photos, like: flags and emblems of terror groups, blueprints and schematics of critical national infrastructure, representations of nude or missing children, as well as faces of known or suspected criminals. ELECTRONIC FIELD AGENTS leverage recent advances in fuzzy logic to perform much of the data acquisition and analysis on the remote PC. This enables the program to conduct wide-ranging data hunts and filter out any materials which do not conform to federal search and seizure law. Using the power of the suspect's own computer system, the software can scour stored files and live traffic across the internal network for items which conform with a high degree of probability to Title 18 legal requirements. UNICODE-AWARE TEXT SEARCHES for matching live typing against a list of trigger words in any language, including Arabic. The dictionary of trigger words can be updated at any time over subliminal channels without arousing suspicion of the most knowledgeable systems analyst. The dictionary can be used to match proper names, book titles, airport codes, and general terms like "bomb" or "virus" in any Unicode language. LOGIC AND GRAMMAR ENGINES will be able to detect telltale signs of mental disturbance. In conjunction with the text search capability, this feature will weed out the merely neurotic from the dangerously insane. This will be nothing less than the ultimate intelligence-gathering tool. And we intend to construct it, at no cost, exclusively for the use of the federal government. "This will be better than other available tools," said Oxblood Ruffin, foreign minister of the cDc. "We wish to provide infrastructure as part of a successful, multi-layered, pyramidal cybercrime strategy. Our system will provide information to help federal prosecutors determine their legal strategy before anyone is tried or even indicted." "We are confident that the government will limit the use of this technology only to targets relevant to legitimate investigations," said Fleming, further underscoring the cult's faith in federal law enforcement organizations. "The FBI has a long history of following Title 18 to the letter." |
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All right all you "nay sayers" (bigsapper and TylerDurden). If you do keep up with the techno news you will have already heard about this. Yes it is a bit old.
You can find an nice article at Wired about this [url]http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,49028,00.html[/url]. Or as the article states [url]http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/22/23318.html[/url] Now I admit that this is primarily for "Microsoft TV". But who is to say that it won't creep into the XP systems (if I remember correctly M$ is basing everything off the XP O/S now). Now, I was a Sr. NT Sys Admin (recently quit). I have been working with NT since 3.1 Beta. I don't have any fun letters behind my title (except for MCP) because I have just been to busy keep up with the exams. Besides, I personally don't believe in the exams anymore. I have seen way to many people out there that have all the letters behind their titles and still don't know squat. But I really wouldn't put this past Mickysoft to put such a thing in their O/S. Especially with all the recent events in the world. |
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Quoted: THE CULT OF THE DEAD COW OFFERS A HELPING HAND IN AMERICA'S TIME OF NEED View Quote Oh great... 6 months time and every ISP in America will be required to spam their clients with some souped up version of BO. ANYONE who knows ANYTHING about trojans can tell you BO is a joke. One bit flippin encryption for a two bit remote admin tool. So here’s the scoop ppl. 1) Run FreeBSD or OpenBSD, install snort and tripwire, don’t install anything that isn’t public sourced and compiled by yourself. 2) Use firewalls. Use PKI. Use spread spectrum proxies. Use Ip spoofing. And for gods sake!!1 nothing less than 512k encryption. If all that was Chinese to you, there is a simpler option. DON’T BREAK THE LAW!!! sheesh [thinking] |
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Hell... there's already a ton of spyware in the setup of my laptop. There is an LiveUpdate applications, a Toshiba "Pinger" that can't be turned off and a lot of others. Whta you need is a good firewall. Firewalls work both ways.. They keep people out of your computer and they prevent spyware from contacting the outside world. Use Zonealarms of BlackICE and you will be amazed what happens everytime you log on to the internet. Tons of spyware already in your computer comes to life. I'm not too worried. I always use a proxy when I surf.
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Quoted: Quoted: THE CULT OF THE DEAD COW OFFERS A HELPING HAND IN AMERICA'S TIME OF NEED View Quote Oh great... 6 months time and every ISP in America will be required to spam their clients with some souped up version of BO. ANYONE who knows ANYTHING about trojans can tell you BO is a joke. One bit flippin encryption for a two bit remote admin tool. So here’s the scoop ppl. 1) Run FreeBSD or OpenBSD, install snort and tripwire, don’t install anything that isn’t public sourced and compiled by yourself. 2) Use firewalls. Use PKI. Use spread spectrum proxies. Use Ip spoofing. And for gods sake!!1 nothing less than 512k encryption. If all that was Chinese to you, there is a simpler option. DON’T BREAK THE LAW!!! sheesh [thinking] View Quote Hey Karma, could you reccommend a good IP spoofer. I do everything I can to stay anonymous... firwall, proxy, off java, off activX, so on... but I can't seem to find a good spoofer. |
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I'm sure that if MS does this to XP, then the hacker/warez community will come up with a way to "undo" it within hours of it's release. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction applies to computers too. :)
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Magic Lantern I am aware of. What I am addressing is this paragraph...
Not so any more. Now both the infamous hacker group the Cult of the Dead Cow (cDc) and Microsoft have offered a helping hand to the Feds and [b]are preparing to include the surveillance software in all future editions and updates of the new Microsoft Windows XP operating system.[/b] View Quote Having Microsoft *allow* the FBI to include Magic Lantern functionality directly in the OS is not something I've heard talked about before. ChrisG |
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Hey! While they are stooping around my shit, I wonder if they could secretly fix my freakin Word 2000 that won't work with my new Dell/XP combo? And Publisher. And WinAmp. yada yada
If they ever target you, NSA can already pretty much tell what you ate for lunch so sit back and enjoy the ride. |
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Let's see. Microsoft, the company that has had NSA keys in their OS offerings for years sells out privacy AGAIN? News--hardly. The only change is that their actions are now OVERT and the sad part is that the masses willingly accept their actions because we are "AT WAR." Nevermind that only Congress can declare war, and that has not been done. Never mind that you can't protect freedom by taking it away. The real tragedy is that by the time the fact that high-level members of our military, political and intelligence aparatus committed the atrocities of 9-11 comes to light, these same whimpering masses will finally start realizing these "terrorist measures" are designed for US.
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