A number of folks have sent the Dell story along. It had the smell of a
hoax from the beginning (would random local police be in on the
conspiracy?), and these articles debunk it quite nicely:
http://www.snopes.com/computer/internet/dellbug.asp
http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/tom-keating/news/the-dell-keylogger-conspiracy-hoax.asp
-Declan
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Declan, can you verify this is for real??
Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2005 11:53:59 -0700 (PDT)
From: hypatia popol <heartofhearts2001@private>
To: Declan McCullagh <declan@private>
Dear Declan. This was forwarded to me and as I am not a techkie I cannot
tell if this is by someone who is pretending to know this stuff. Can you
or any of your co-hearts verify this ???? Thanks!
*/Steve Bartholomew <barticle@private>/* wrote:
Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2005 17:37:41 -0700 (PDT)
From: Steve Bartholomew <barticle@private>
Subject: Fwd: You must see this!
To: "John Arnold \(Jack\)" <j1j11j@private>
This from a friend in Washington State. I feel safer already, don't
you?
> Date: Wed, 22 Jun 2005 21:38:06 -0700
> Subject: You must see this!
>
>
> http://c0x2.de/lol/lol.html
>
> chromance.de dell keylogger
>
> I was opening up my almost brand new Dell 600m laptop, to replace
> a broken PCMCIA slot riser on the motherboard. As soon as I got
> the keyboard off, I noticed a small cable running from the
> keyboard connection underneath a piece of metal protecting the
> motherboard.
>
> thingy0240.jpg
>
> I figured "No Big Deal", and continued with the dissasembly. But
> when I got the metal panels off, I saw a small white
> heatshink-wrapped package. Being ever-curious, I sliced the
> heatshrink open. I found a little circuit board inside.
>
> thingy1320.jpg
>
> Being an EE by trade, this piqued my curiosity considerably. On
> one side of the board, one Atmel AT45D041A four megabit Flash
> memory chip.
>
> thingy3320.jpg
>
> On the other side, one Microchip Technology PIC16F876 Programmable
> Interrupt Controller, along with a little Fairchild Semiconductor
> CD4066BCM quad bilateral switch.
>
> thingy2160.jpg
>
> Looking further, I saw that the other end of the cable was
> connected to the integrated ethernet board.
>
> What could this mean? I called Dell tech support about it, and
> they said, and I quote, "The intregrated service tag identifier is
> there for assisting customers in the event of lost or misplaced
> personal information." He then hung up.
>
> A little more research, and I found that that board spliced in
> between the keyboard and the ethernet chip is little more than a
> Keyghost hardware keylogger.
>
> The reasons Dell would put this in thier laptops can only be left
> up to your imagination. It would be very impractical to
> hand-anylze the logs, and very CPU-intensive to do so on a
> computer for every person that purchased a dell laptop. Why are
> these keyloggers here? I recently almost found out.
>
> I called the police, as having a keylogger unknown to me in my
> laptop is a serious offense. They told me to call the Department
> of Homeland Security. At this point, I am in disbelief. Why would
> the DHS have a keylogger in my laptop? It was surreal.
>
> So I called them, and they told me to submit a Freedom of
> Information Act request. This is what I got back:
>
> homelandletter.png
>
> eXTReMe Tracker
>
>
> Bob Alexander
>
> http://www.superbeans.com <http://www.superbeans.com/>
>
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