CRIME Article on Magic Lantern from ZDNET

From: Steve Layman (slayman@private)
Date: Fri Dec 07 2001 - 19:30:38 PST

  • Next message: Crispin Cowan: "Re: CRIME Article on Magic Lantern from ZDNET"

    Below is an interesting article that was posted on ZDNET.com on Dec. 
    4th. A few points:
    
        * Paragraph  two states they (FBI) want to use Magic Lantern "in the
          war against terrorism" whereas in paragraph 6 they want to use
          Magic Lantern "to find criminals and terrorists". It clearly does
          not state to monitor or gleam information from suspected criminals
          but says "to find criminals". Which one is it. Call me niave but I
          think it is the latter.
        * Making Magic Lantern and other activity such as Carnivore public
          knowledge (one of the few times I think I have ever complimented
          the press) has done two good things and I think one bad thing if
          you change your paradigm. Carnivore brought to light that you must
          use an encryption tool such as PGP. It told folks you need this
          tool or something like it to keep others with absolutely no
          business from snooping into and intercepting your private
          communications . Great lesson from the Carnivore news and the
          world benefited. Secondly, Magic Lantern brings to light that
          folks must be very very careful with email attachments. Maybe even
          to the point of paranoia. I never ever open any email attachment
          on my computer that is conneted to the internet. Period. Not even
          if my mother's name is on it. Don't even send attachments to me I
          tell folks. Great  lesson from the Magic Lantern news is that you
          must protect you encryption keys. Treat them like gold!!! The bad
          thing it has done is place ideas in the heads of those that may
          not have ever thought to develop a key-logger for malicious
          reasons. It is no deep dark secret that many government and
          commerial computer networks lack adequate security and now a new
          tool has been brought to light although actually not new. You will
          see many malicious code writers developing their own key-logger
          trojan because it is the latest craze.
        * I use Norton at home (sorry Jimmy... it had the best rebate at the
          time) and no I have not read the entire license agreement word for
          word but my expectation is that it would scan for all cases where
          a signature was available. The public's expectation  I would think
          would be very high that something this powerful would be able to
          be scanned for and detected. I think folks could potentially sue
          an AV and argue in a court of law that being able to detect for
          Magic Lantern was a "reasonable expectation" based upon the type
          of product I purchased and it was marketed to as a detection
          program and thus why was Magic Lantern noted detected?. Is this
          correct? I agree with the author of the article that collusion
          with the FBI would probably begin the downfall of U.S AV company
          dominance if not the end for those that were proven in the press
          to collude. A company would then loose the trust that is so
          important to the success of the company unless you have a monopoly
          or something close. I am sure their are others (shadowy webs) with
          no alligiance to anyone except the almighty dollar that would
          gladly pick up the slack.
        * I think with the news of Magic Lantern that makes it already
          useless as an effective tool. Kind of like publishing that there
          is photo radar at a particular intersection. What idiot would then
          run a red light if he know. As the authors of many books on
          hacking have stated, "know your emeny". They say this is key and
          it could not be more true. I think in the hacker or malicious code
          writer world they would say they clearly know whom they see as the
          enemy and they are not impressed. Stories are published almost
          daily about some sys. admin. not doing his/her job. Hackers and
          malicious code writers know that for the most part sys. admins.
          may not be well trained or very diligent about security or
          applying  know patches.
    
    To something more topical... many years ago I played around with a voice 
    recognition S/W tool but never really understood how it worked 
    internally. I had issues with reliability and it was cumbersome to use 
    so I just uninstalled it and never played with it since. Does anyone 
    know how effective Magic Lantern (or any key-logging trojan) would be 
    againt a voice recognition key stroke generator tool instead of 
    physically touching the keys to create and send emails and does this 
    possiblity even exist with any email tools out there?
    
    http://www.zdnet.com/zdfeeds/msncobrand/news/0%2C13622%2C2829781%2C-hud00025nshm3%2C00.html 
    



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