If charges prove to be real, the federal government may be subject to the greatest cyber-espionage scandal in history: Berlin is suspected of placing in the German computer surveillance programs for online communications. And, apparently, it’s not even the only Western government to use such practices.
In the summer of 2007, the German Federal Ministry of the Interior made public the completion of a software application capable of spying on computers of suspected terrorists. The Trojan, a computer program placed in potential enemy’s computer, would have sent to competent evidence of suspects’ guilt.
“The Public”, wrote in August of that year, the weekly Der Spiegel, “asked what are the limits of such government action”. The answer came from the Constitutional Court, which prohibited, in February 2008, the launching of the application.
Late last week, the subject is again a current issue: Chaos Computer Club (CCC), an organization of hackers in Berlin, with the reputation of “good guys”, active in protecting privacy on the Internet, accused the German authorities for releasing such a “Trojan horse” and collecting data from public computers – from emails to calls via Skype.
“Der Bundestrojaner” (“Federal Trojan”), an application that CCC received for analysis, is able to spy well above the limits allowed by German law. The program, CCC members explained, is not limited to scan personal information where is installed, but allows remote launch operations, without – of course – the knowledge of the owner.
Technical errors and industrial espionage
Trojans are usually placed through e-mails and open the door (backdoor) for those who want to steal credit card information or send spam. This time, CCC argues, it is circulated through applications from state institutions – to monitor online communications.
The program would, however, have a number of encryption errors of stolen data and everyone familiar with computers can use the backdoor left open by the “Trojan” to access the host computer. In this respect, CCC welcomed the fact that hackers have not embarked on the side of the government.
On the other hand, information gathered will be centralized after they have followed an electronic trail which crosses the U.S., which irritates the German companies, accusing the creators of the Trojan of giving economic and technological secrets to countries known of spying Germany.
The paternity of the Trojan has not yet been clarified, but the Interior Ministry denied on Sunday, his secret service involvement (BKA, the equivalent of American FBI) in this business. Steffan Seibert, spokesman for the Federal Chancellery, said that the Chief Executive in Berlin, Angela Merkel, takes very seriously allegations of CCC.
R2D2
The Trojan was analyzed by electronic security firm F-Secure, coming to the conclusion that the application seeks the activity on Internet browsers (eg Firefox) and conversations on MSN or programs like Yahoo Messenger, ICQ or Skype, being able to make audio recordings.
F-Secure notes that, since 2001, several American manufacturers of anti-virus have agreed to leave in their systems of protection, some “gray areas” to allow access to computer of an electronic intelligence device – such as “Magic Lantern” – developed by one of the U.S. intelligence services.
After making these remarks on its website, F-Secure predicts that the subject will become a large-scale media issue, before defining the Trojan found: “That said, we found the backdoor W32/R2D2.A. The R2D2 name comes from C3PO-R2D2-POE sequence of code used to initiate data transmission” (C3PO and R2D2 are the names of two characters – robots – from the movie Star Wars).
It remains only to prove to what extent computers that have “Trojan federal” installed have become infected before or after the Constitutional Court decision in February 2008.