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IP: Unintended Consequences and a Nation Made Weaker (fwd)
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Sun, 25 Nov 2001 10:54:14 -0500
From: David Lesher <wb8foz () nrk com> Subject: Unintended Consequences and a Nation Made Weaker From: "Andrew C. Greenberg" <werdna () MUCOW COM> There was a recent discussion on Slashdot concerning an article appearing in the Washington Post regarding the FBI's Cyber Knight program and the Magic Lantern remote key logger virus: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1436-2001Nov22.html In particular, the article suggests that virus manufacturer, McAfee, has agreed not to "recognize" ML so to alert suspects about being keylogged. In the discussion, it was suggested that if McAfee is ignoring viruses as part of its virus checking program, then all a malicious virus need do is to mimic whatever signature is used to recognize ML, and thus have free reign over a subject system. The irony here, is that permitting government to engage in unauthorized and covert entry to a citizen's computer system, and having manufacturers of safety equipment "support" the covert entry, the likely consequence is an effective backdoor that can also be exploited by virus writers, including cyberterrorists. In other words, in its efforts to protect the nation from terrorism, the federal government has in fact weakened the nation's IT infrastructure, and made us even more vulnerable to the bad guys. Far from protecting us, the FBI has only made a nation weaker.
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