Clueless Spanish Politicians Want To Join The Government Malware Club

from the dedicated-follower-of-fashion dept

Tue, Jun 25th 2013 2:42pm — Glyn Moody

As we've noted before, when it comes to the Internet, governments around the world have an unfortunate habit of copying each other's worst ideas. Thus the punitive three-strikes approach based on accusations, not proof, was pioneered by France, and then spread to the UK, South Korea, New Zealand and finally the US (where, naturally, it became the bigger and better "six strikes" scheme). France appears to be about to abandon this unworkable and ineffective approach, leaving other countries to deal with all the problems it has since discovered.

Now there seems to be a new craze amongst ill-informed policy-makers: the use of government-sanctioned malware to spy on citizens. We wrote about Germany's trojan software back in October last year. Australia's spies want the same capability, and New Europe is reporting that Spain too is planning to pass a law that will allow its police to install malware on the systems of citizens:

According to the article 350 of the proposed draft, prosecutors may ask the judge for "the installation of a software that allows the remote examination and without knowledge of the owner of the content in computers, electronical devices, computer systems, instruments of massive storage or databases."

The key concern raised for similar projects of other countries applies here too: intentionally placing malware on computers increases the risk that others will be able to take control of those systems thanks to vulnerabilities in the code. That's no theoretical issue, as evidenced by major flaws discovered in Germany's trojan software. But it turns out that Spain's proposed malware scheme has an additional bad idea: Furthermore, the article 351 of the text explains that official agents may require cooperation from "anyone who knows the operation of the computer system or measures applied in order to protect data held there". This means that Spanish authorities might require services from experts, "hackers" or computer companies.
Clearly that could be applied to Google or Facebook, say, which might be forced to provide user passwords or maybe even actively cooperate in attempts to infect a user's system. Given the current revelations about Internet companies' complicity in spying on huge numbers of people around the world, there seems little reason to hope that they would refuse to do so, despite protestations to the contrary, even if they -- unlike the Spanish politicians proposing this law -- understood the extreme stupidity of this approach.

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Filed Under: malware, spain, surveillance

18 Comments

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Ninja (profile), 25 Jun 2013 @ 12:57pm

Full scale war against the people and the Internet. Orwell was a prophet it seems. I hope the people are able to stop this madness.
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Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 25 Jun 2013 @ 2:51pm

Wow!
Who knew governments could be so chock-full of DUMB?

This is so mind-bendingly dumb you have to wonder if it's deliberate.
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Anonymous Coward, 25 Jun 2013 @ 2:58pm

The governments of the world are systematically destroying the internet.
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Anonymous Coward, 25 Jun 2013 @ 3:05pm

so, it's an offence to infect a computer with malware or similar, but ok for the government to do it! that nearly makes sense. so what happens when malware of some sort gets on to a computer belonging to a government official then, installed by a competitor of one sort or another? i dont suppose it will be revealed until well after the 'infection' has been neutralized and whatever damage done has been well and truly covered up. however, i think an 'official' machine will be one of the first to be caught, once it is apparent that this malware is around. and bloody good job too! i still wonder at how we manage to always vote complete fucking numbskulls into such important positions!
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leader of 3000 class A hackers says BOO, 25 Jun 2013 @ 3:11pm

process now for a pc desktop
buy pc
take home
wipe it totally clean 7 times
then put a pirated operating system on it.

yup thanks for spying come again....
see all the old farts are getting scared of my kind
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John Fenderson (profile), 25 Jun 2013 @ 3:25pm

Re: process now for a pc desktop
Why put a pirated OS on it? That gains you nothing in terms of security and potentially opens you up to further mischief, depending on where you got the pirated OS. Not to mention being the wrong thing to do for a few other reasons.

You have numerous options for nonpirated, safer, better operating systems that you can maintain control over.

Also, you should have a solid tripwire system on your computers to spot any unwanted tampering with your files, and the most restrictive firewall you can stand so if some malware does infect your system it will have problems phoning home.
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Anonymous Coward, 25 Jun 2013 @ 3:26pm

Re: leader of 3000 class A hackers says BOO
then put a pirated operating system on it.

Multics today

� Could Multics be ported to a modern micro?
Yes. As a matter of fact�

� Could an emulator be written for a Multics CPU?
Yes. Now that�

So there you go.

see all the old farts are getting scared of my kind
Terrified. Absolutely terrified.
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Chris Brand, 25 Jun 2013 @ 3:38pm

Trigger for "Reasonable doubt" ?
If I was prosecuted for something using evidence obtained in this way, I'd use the fact that there was software that I had not installed, was unaware of, and had no control over to show reasonable doubt that I was actually responsible for whatever was done on the machine. Who's to say that the malware itself, or somebody (intentionally or otherwise) in control of it didn't do whatever the bad deed is ?
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PlagueSD (profile), 25 Jun 2013 @ 4:16pm

Time to go download Tor...You remember that program provided by the US Government to prevent foreign governments from spying on thier citizens? Guess we need to start using it now...
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Anonymous Coward, 25 Jun 2013 @ 4:44pm

Open Source
The more governments start relying on back doors and unpatched vulnerabilities, the more it makes sense to run open source software under Linux. Also, in light of Google's cooperation with the NSA, it also makes sense to avoid Chrome in favor of Firefox.
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McCrea (profile), 25 Jun 2013 @ 8:59pm

Re: process now for a pc desktop
I figure the govts are the pirates. They're uploading infected versions of popular software such as OS's under the pretense of tracking copyright infringements rather than the blatant cause of bypassing civil privacy rights.
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Seegras (profile), 26 Jun 2013 @ 1:22am

Broken chain of evidence
I'm completely baffled why _law enforcement agencies_ are backing these hare-brained schemes.

Any forensic technician can tell you, that with such malware on a computer, you've got a broken chain of evidence. You cannot prove anymore that the user of that computer was actually committing a crime. It could just as well been perpetrated by the agent controlling the malware.

So any government installed malware is completely, utterly, unusable for law enforcement purposes.

Of course, intelligence agencies give a damn about any chains of evidence; so they might like it.
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frank, 26 Jun 2013 @ 3:46am

Message to the Dutch readers
This kind of law is drawn up in the Netherlands: please speak up at: http://www.internetconsultatie.nl/computercriminaliteit
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Pragmatic, 26 Jun 2013 @ 6:02am

Re: Re: process now for a pc desktop
Uh, a tripwire system? Could you give us some more information on those, please?

I'm not sure I've got one and think I probably need one.
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Anonymous Coward, 26 Jun 2013 @ 6:59am

and New Europe is reporting that Spain too is planning

New Europe, I did not know about that place, it is near New York ?

Europe is a group of many countries, it cannot 'report' anything.
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Anonymous Coward, 26 Jun 2013 @ 7:08am

Re:
It'll be funny once the government malware is flagged and removed by standard tools just like other malware, it rises to the top of leading security threats, then someone leaks that it's the government created malware.
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John Fenderson (profile), 26 Jun 2013 @ 9:57am

Re: Re: Re: process now for a pc desktop
This is a common one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Source_Tripwire, although there are others.
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Anonymous Coward, 26 Jun 2013 @ 6:54pm

Re:
Dear Idiot,

New Europe is the name of a website.

Sincerely,
Techdirt's Unofficial Clue Department
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