Comments on: Proxy Servers, etc. Won’t Protect You From The FBI’s Spyware

By: Central Scrutinizer

Central Scrutinizer — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 04:07:20 +0000

I’ve been waiting for the FBI to press for legal authority to Big Brother anything with connectivity – not that anyone in “law” enforcement feels the need for such quaint notions anymore. But it seemed a bit curious they didn’t play the “drug war”, “kiddie porn”, or “terrorism” cards any harder than they did if only to make it more convenient / less expensive to remotely observe the boring intimate details of my digital life. And this of course explains why – it’s been terribly easy for a long time. Anyone who thinks Procexp or any other tool will reveal everything lurking in Windows doesn’t know Microsoft very well – remember who bought Sysinternals a little while back. And frankly we can’t call ourselves software wizards if we can’t hide such code in something as ponderous, proprietary and opaque as Windows. Just assume anything you do is being observed, by someone, who probably has something particular he’s assigned to watch for, and try not to do that.

By: ECA

ECA — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 02:21:47 +0000

you should get the suit of sysinternals.. Pretty cool, if you KNOW WHAT you are looking at..
I like the one that takes 20 minutes to START windows to check ALL programs that start at startup..

By: bac

bac — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 00:07:12 +0000

Here is a nice utility from Sysinternals called Process Explorer. It is a Windows app.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx

By: Rick Cain

Rick Cain — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 22:06:10 +0000

Whats troubling is that the FBI spyware could be rewritten by a foreign agent and used for nefarious purposes.

By: ECA

ECA — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 20:54:51 +0000

Task manger, watcher..
Check out the utilities in Spybot advanced TOOLS..
They can even tell whcih programs are linked and GIVE you info in WHO wrote it..

By: John

John — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 19:14:18 +0000

So, does this spyware run on Linux? And why does your comment box suck so much?

By: amodedoma

amodedoma — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 14:49:56 +0000

Actually I learn security from European LAN parties where thousands get together with their PC’s. I take a machine I can monitor and actually hope to get infected while I’m downloading hundreds of gigas of piracy playing online games and showing off my robots. Careful I am where careful I need be.

By: Paddy-O

Paddy-O — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 14:25:05 +0000

amodedoma says:
Yeah I suppose if your dumb enough to leave your MBR’s exposed rootkit
could modify your kernel.

Well, if you are using Wondoze there’s nothing you can do about it short of a good anti-root kit program. As I said, people get caught because they THINK they know what they are doing. You be careful out there

By: amodedoma

amodedoma — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 14:24:05 +0000

oops that’s IARSN… sorry!

By: amodedoma

amodedoma — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 14:23:26 +0000

My favorite taskmanager is IASRN’s TaskInfo. It’s ery complete and useful and not too big.

By: amodedoma

amodedoma — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 14:20:43 +0000

Yeah I suppose if your dumb enough to leave your MBR’s exposed rootkit could modify your kernel. I guess the point is in this day of WOW computing, where any idiot can use a computer, there’s plenty for the FBI to do. But that’s always been true. There’s no absolute security, if they want in they’ll get in. I’m just saying that this crap is just that, crap. No broad reaching consequences just more of the same.

Is anyone else having problems with the message editor? It’s right justifiying everything the cursor appears to jump to the beginning of the line on punctuation . I’m finding it hard to use. BTW I’m using latest firefox.

By: dvdchris

dvdchris — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 14:18:47 +0000

Ok, first, this right side typing garbage HAS TO GO.
Second, : @amodedoma, suggestions for a decent taskmanager?

By: Paddy-O

Paddy-O — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 13:44:31 +0000

amodedoma says:

“Personally I’ve always liked to watch what’s running on my PC, get a
“decent taskmanager and you can watch everything thats running

Unless it is a rootkit designed to not show up as a running process. That is how they get caught. They THINK they know how to secure their system.

By: amodedoma

amodedoma — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 13:11:52 +0000

Personally I’ve always liked to watch what’s running on my PC, get a decent taskmanager and you can watch everything thats running and get all kinds of interesting info about connections and memory use. I started doing this out of an obsession for performance issues, but what with all the trojans and such I’ve also found it useful for cleaning up infected systems too. Seems kinda stupid to me. I mean if you’re gonna do something illegal online and use proxies and ip spoofing it just doesn’t gel that you’d be so stupid as to let this crap install on your machine in the first place. I guess they need to justify the millions they’re spending by telling everybody how clever they are.

By: kyus3

kyus3 — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 12:42:53 +0000

the fact that child porn is freely available on p2p networks shows how out of touch law enforcement is, it would be so easy to stop