Law-enforcement DIRT Trojan released

[InfoSec News <isn () c4i org>]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/24433.html

By Thomas C Greene in Washington
Posted: 14/03/2002 at 20:43 GMT

Disgraced former policeman and convicted felon Frank Jones of Codex
Data Systems has had his Web site hacked and his overpriced cop-spy
Trojan, aptly named D.I.R.T., released to the public.

One would hope that the security community will make use of the above
.zip file, provided courtesy of Cryptome's John Young, examine the
product and publish a tool for making a Windows box DIRT-proof easily
and effectively. The .zip contains the main executable, the installer
and the user's manual. It is not a working example, as the activation
key is lacking.

Jones has been hustling his rip-off product to LEAs (law-enforcement
agencies) and military organizations as an elite crime-fighting tool.  
But in reality it's a common Trojan horse which permits over-zealous
cops to upload files (i.e., plant incriminating evidence) on a
victim's computer without any auditing mechanism which would record
this criminal activity by the authorities. Thus it's been a hit in
quarters where this sort of abuse is unlikely to be challenged, such
as Asia, Africa and South America.

It's fair to say that the chief use of this tool will be to plant
evidence and thus to extort confessions from targets unpopular with
local and State authorities. It could also be used illicitly to
produce evidence at trial, if the defense is foolish enough not to
challenge it, or if the prosecution should trick the judge into
keeping its details secret, as the FBI managed to do in the case of
Nicodemo Scarfo and the key-logger used against him.

In that case the keylogger was not used to produce evidence intended
to be introduced at trial; but the judge's willingness to keep the
defense from knowing what they were dealing with has rather chilling
implications in context of Jones' loathsome little Trojan. Indeed,
key-logging is one of the features DIRT offers (as do BO2K and
SubSeven, only for free); and there has been rumor (none of it
substantiated) that DIRT was what the FBI used against Scarfo, under
the name 'Magic Lantern'.

If this were true, then the FBI has been dealing with a man banned
from accepting contracts with the US government, following his
conviction on fraud charges for selling bogus wiretap gear, and
functioning wiretap gear to persons ineligible to receive it.

Interestingly, the terms of Jones' ban allow the head of a federal
agency to grant him an exception where that agency's interests would
be served. Again, I must point out that the Magic Lantern connection
is based on rumor, and that I personally doubt the FBI would trust
Jones to fetch coffee and doughnuts for them.

Another interesting feature of DIRT is how preposterously expensive it
is, going for $2,000 for a single-target version up to $30,000 for a
250-target version, and yet it accomplishes nothing that the free
Trojans BO2K and SubSeven can't. As such it's one of the most
monumental rip-offs we know of -- one which will, of course, be bought
with taxpayers' hard-earned cash wherever it's deployed.

Jones has also been trying to cash in on the 9/11 atrocity with an
atrocity of his own, a grotesquely mawkish collage on his home page,
showing a grieving Dubya and images of overwhelmed firefighters
superimposed over no fewer than four shots of the burning World Trade
Center towers.

"Codex will provide its D.I.R.T. software for FREE to all US Law
enforcement agencies, US Intelligence agencies and US Military
agencies to aid in the identification and apprehension of the person
or persons responsible for the events of September 11, 2001," the
putatively patriotic felon says.

Of course, "US" is the key modifier here, and certainly none of these
agencies will be foolish enough to use Jones' crummy product. He's
only trying to give it to people who won't buy it -- and who can't buy
it while he's on the contract ban list. The real market is overseas,
in countries where human rights are a joke, and Jones knows this.

The 9/11 publicity scam is even more loathsome because Jones' real
customers may well look at that page and imagine that US LEAs are
actually using his overpriced toy.

Jones' marketing materials are filled with overstatements regarding
DIRT's effectiveness and stealth. As we reported earlier, the Trojan
installs three files on the victim's computer, named, by default,
desktop.exe, desktop.log, and desktop.dll. However, savvy operators
may well change the file names, hence the need for a proper DIRT
cleaner.

The toy is apparently not effective against *nix or Mac users, though
according to some of Jones' materials, it seems possible that the Mac
limitation is currently being addressed, or has very recently been
overcome. On the other hand, Jones' materials are always chock full of
exaggeration and wishful thinking, so this may not be worth worrying
about.

What is worth worrying about are the gross human rights violations
this loathsome package will invite. A positively criminal tool,
marketed by -- what else? -- a convicted criminal.



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