Mid-day carried an article - Virtual khabris to zoom-in on terrorists - they are tracking all your keystrokes, screenshots and mouse-moves at the CyberCafes.
Mumbai police will have access to new software connected to 500 cyber cafes in the city that will send them logs of every keystroke that you type and screenshots at regular interval. The result is a fallout of the investigations into the recent Hyderabad and Mumbai blasts which revealed that the planning was done using the Internet especially - chat rooms.
In fact, it is a well-known fact that terrorists all over the world do not use paper and pen or the phone to communicate. Everywhere, all over the world, it’s the net.
Why just CyberCafes?
Vijay Mukhi, President of the Foundation for Information Security and Technology says, “The terrorists know that if they use machines at home, they can be caught. Cybercafes therefore give them anonymity.”
The Mumbai police are in dialogue with M/s Micro Technologies for procuring a software called CARMS (Cyber Access Remote Monitoring System), a powerful monitoring tool that seeks to curb cyber crime. CARMS monitors web browsing, file transfers, news, chats, messaging and e-mail, including all encoded attachments. In a sensitive environment, CARMS can also be used to restrict user or group access to only approved external and internal sites, explained a company official.
All cyber cafes in the city will now need a police license to keep their business going. All cafes need to register at the police headquarters and provide details on the number of computers installed, type of computers and technical details like the IP address of each machine.
This is pretty similar to what The FBI in the US have long back in the late nineties - Magic Lantern - a keystroke logging software. Unlike previous keystroke logger programs used by the FBI, Magic Lantern can reportedly be installed remotely, via an e-mail attachment or “by exploiting common operating system vulnerabilities”. It has been variously described as a virus and a Trojan horse. It is not known how the program might store or communicate the recorded keystrokes.
Magic Lantern was indeed an upgraded version of their earlier counterpart - The Carnivore - a system implemented by the Federal Bureau of Investigation that is analogous to wiretapping, except in this case, e-mail and other communications are being tapped instead of telephone conversations. Carnivore was essentially a customizable packet sniffer that could monitor all of a target user’s Internet traffic. It is a form of policeware. U.S. government officials have neither confirmed or denied much about the physical or logical workings of Carnivore, but there are some basic facts that are generally agreed upon.
REFERENCES
- iFaceThoughts: Mumbai Police Wants To Monitor Activities In Cybercafes
- India Uncut: Big Brother Is Reading Your Email?
- A public usable version of Carnivore.
[poll=66]
Post a Comment