FBI worms its way into criminal communications

 

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Posted on 14 Dec 2001 at 14:59

When is a virus, not a virus? When it's written by the FBI.

Reuters reports that an FBI spokesman has confirmed that the US government is working on a project, codenamed Magic Lantern, that will log the key-strokes made on infected machines and enable the FBI to track communications made using it.

Remember the recent W32.Badtrans.B@mm MAPI worm which opened a Trojan back door on an infected machine and deployed a keystroke logger to monitor what was written on it? (We do, as we're still getting plenty of infected messages caught in our firewall.) Well, it looks like Magic Lantern will do essentially the same thing.

Fortunately, most major antivirus companies have said that they would not voluntarily cooperate with the FBI, updating their software to detect and clean viruses, no matter where they originated. However, the FBI could get its virus ignored by antivirus software with a legal order. And ISPs have in the past voluntarily cooperated with the FBI allowing it to install its technology on their servers.

Author: Matt Whipp