A group that calls itself the Chaos Computer Club prompted a public outcry here recently when it discovered that German state investigators were using spying software capable of turning a computer’s webcam and microphone into a sophisticated surveillance device.The club, a German hacking organization, announced last Saturday it had analyzed the hard drives of people who had been investigated and discovered that they were infected with a Trojan horse program that gave the police the ability to log keystrokes, capture screenshots and activate cameras and microphones. The software exceeded the powers prescribed to the police by Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court.
www.nytimes.com/2011/10/15/world/europe/uproar-in-germany-on-police-use-of-surveillance-software.htmlAlso see:Ein spy: is the German government using a trojan to watch its citizens?
On October 8, Berlin’s hacking collective the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) announced it had analysed a piece of software it believed had been written by the German Government.Once installed on a computer, the software could quietly listen to conversations on Skype, log keystrokes and switch on the computer’s web-cam. It would then report this data back to servers, two of which were identified – one in the US and the other in Germany.The program could also be remotely updated and potentially used to install and run other programs. The security company F-Secure’s Mikko Hypponen reported its own findings on the malware (malicious software) and confirmed the CCC’s analysis.
http://theconversation.edu.au/ein-spy-is-the-german-government-using-a-trojan-to-watch-its-citizens-3765