The Times: Tech column - Trojans/Ginger/Company Googling
By David Rowan
WHO'S watching what you type? Your keystrokes spell out your passwords, your credit-card numbers, and your private conversations - so it's no joke that Britain's fastest-spreading "viruses" can monitor your typing history and send it down the phone line.
They are known as Trojans - like the horses, the programs arrive at your computer in benign disguises - and in recent days "BadTrans-B" has been the troublemaker infiltrating the nation's e-mails. Arriving in Outlook in-trays, it can get to work without you even opening an attachment - and while it reproduces through your address book it tries to record your keyboard entries. Not much fun if a malicious hacker is out there waiting.
The online banks woke up to the risks a while ago, but now the ranks of law enforcement have decided that "key-logging", as it's known, might be quite useful. If governments want to keep track of potential wrongdoers, why not snoop on their keystrokes and arrange for the records to be automatically mailed back to HQ? The question is causing furious debate among computer-security experts.
The debate was sparked a fortnight ago, when the FBI was reported to be developing a key-logging program of its own. Known as "Magic Lantern", the software would be e-mailed to suspects' computers to "steal" the keys to unlock their encrypted messages. Passwords would be sent down the line without the suspects' knowledge - and so the popular Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) encryption program, an excellent way of scrambling e-mails, would be rendered transparent.
Privacy advocates have been quick to warn of the software's potential for abuse, allowing agencies (including the British police) to mop up data without obtaining search warrants. But interestingly, the most agitated voices are now being heard within the virus-protection industry. If the people who make products such as McAfee have to co-operate with the Feds - to ensure that targets are not alerted to Trojans' arrival - then who will trust their "anti-virus solutions"?
Reports last week claimed that McAfee's owners have already been in touch with the FBI about reining in its products (the company denies this). Bulletin boards are already urging boycotts of "deliberately faulty" anti-virus kits.
There are three lessons to draw from all this. First, be aware that it is now straightforward for people to monitor your keystrokes for malicious ends - so if you use Outlook or Outlook Express, install whatever security patches Microsoft recommends against Trojans. Second, don't expect commercially available software to alert you if you come under the authorities' suspicion. And third, don't presume that encryption will safeguard your private messages: governments appear determined to overthrow online privacy - even if that means using hackers' tools to do.
++++
Every now and then a new technology is hyped as a life-changer before anyone has a clue what it is. Since January, an extraordinary buzz has been growing about a mysterious device code-named "Ginger" or "IT" - said to have impressed Jeff Bezos of Amazon and Steve Jobs of Apple enough to invest in it, and attracted a £175,000 book advance, even though the inventor, Dean Kamen, has still not revealed a bean. The leaks suggest that it is a hydrogen-powered scooter with a zero-emission engine, which if true could save a few oil barrels; but today the Good Morning America show finally promises to reveal the secret. If it's not a hoax - and the tech journals are sceptical - then this could be the biggest thing since, ooh, the Sinclair C5 ...
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HERE'S a trick that could cause chaos in your workplace. Google, the Internet search engine that also archives news groups, now lets you search for all the messages sent to chat rooms from a specific company domain. If, for instance, you want to discover what Microsoft employees have been posting to news groups, go to groups.google.com and search for "author:@microsoft.com".
Picking media companies at random, it took us seconds to uncover the following: the Wall Street Journal is desperate to talk to US postal workers for an article; a BBC documentary team is looking for "UFO witnesses to tell of their accounts"; and Richard Tait, the editor-in-chief of ITN, is apparently keen on obtaining a Peter Gabriel record.
Go on, try it - you never know what you will learn about your colleagues.
(The Times, December 3 2001)
WHO'S watching what you type? Your keystrokes spell out your passwords, your credit-card numbers, and your private conversations - so it's no joke that Britain's fastest-spreading "viruses" can monitor your typing history and send it down the phone line.
They are known as Trojans - like the horses, the programs arrive at your computer in benign disguises - and in recent days "BadTrans-B" has been the troublemaker infiltrating the nation's e-mails. Arriving in Outlook in-trays, it can get to work without you even opening an attachment - and while it reproduces through your address book it tries to record your keyboard entries. Not much fun if a malicious hacker is out there waiting.
The online banks woke up to the risks a while ago, but now the ranks of law enforcement have decided that "key-logging", as it's known, might be quite useful. If governments want to keep track of potential wrongdoers, why not snoop on their keystrokes and arrange for the records to be automatically mailed back to HQ? The question is causing furious debate among computer-security experts.
The debate was sparked a fortnight ago, when the FBI was reported to be developing a key-logging program of its own. Known as "Magic Lantern", the software would be e-mailed to suspects' computers to "steal" the keys to unlock their encrypted messages. Passwords would be sent down the line without the suspects' knowledge - and so the popular Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) encryption program, an excellent way of scrambling e-mails, would be rendered transparent.
Privacy advocates have been quick to warn of the software's potential for abuse, allowing agencies (including the British police) to mop up data without obtaining search warrants. But interestingly, the most agitated voices are now being heard within the virus-protection industry. If the people who make products such as McAfee have to co-operate with the Feds - to ensure that targets are not alerted to Trojans' arrival - then who will trust their "anti-virus solutions"?
Reports last week claimed that McAfee's owners have already been in touch with the FBI about reining in its products (the company denies this). Bulletin boards are already urging boycotts of "deliberately faulty" anti-virus kits.
There are three lessons to draw from all this. First, be aware that it is now straightforward for people to monitor your keystrokes for malicious ends - so if you use Outlook or Outlook Express, install whatever security patches Microsoft recommends against Trojans. Second, don't expect commercially available software to alert you if you come under the authorities' suspicion. And third, don't presume that encryption will safeguard your private messages: governments appear determined to overthrow online privacy - even if that means using hackers' tools to do.
++++
Every now and then a new technology is hyped as a life-changer before anyone has a clue what it is. Since January, an extraordinary buzz has been growing about a mysterious device code-named "Ginger" or "IT" - said to have impressed Jeff Bezos of Amazon and Steve Jobs of Apple enough to invest in it, and attracted a £175,000 book advance, even though the inventor, Dean Kamen, has still not revealed a bean. The leaks suggest that it is a hydrogen-powered scooter with a zero-emission engine, which if true could save a few oil barrels; but today the Good Morning America show finally promises to reveal the secret. If it's not a hoax - and the tech journals are sceptical - then this could be the biggest thing since, ooh, the Sinclair C5 ...
++++
HERE'S a trick that could cause chaos in your workplace. Google, the Internet search engine that also archives news groups, now lets you search for all the messages sent to chat rooms from a specific company domain. If, for instance, you want to discover what Microsoft employees have been posting to news groups, go to groups.google.com and search for "author:@microsoft.com".
Picking media companies at random, it took us seconds to uncover the following: the Wall Street Journal is desperate to talk to US postal workers for an article; a BBC documentary team is looking for "UFO witnesses to tell of their accounts"; and Richard Tait, the editor-in-chief of ITN, is apparently keen on obtaining a Peter Gabriel record.
Go on, try it - you never know what you will learn about your colleagues.
(The Times, December 3 2001)
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