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Posted: Thu Oct 06, 2005 8:06 pm Post Subject: IS YOUR COMPUTER A STATE SPONSORED INFORMER?
I chanced upon the following article today during my travels. After having absorbed the content I was left agog and with a definite feeling of unease. If this be true, we should all be fearful of the potential threat to our computer privacy, information and freedoms that this technology represents.
Although an American article, I have reproduced it in full and placed it here in the General New Zealand forum as I believe; it is a subject that we should all be aware of and take very seriously. There are many US manufactured computers in NZ and with regards to the “keyghost” keylogger spoken of there is a strong New Zealand input which I will share at the end of this article.
Here is the article:
GOVERNMENT AND COMPUTER MANUFACTURERS CAUGHT INSTALLING HARD-WIRED KEYSTROKE LOGGERS INTO ALL NEW LAPTOP COMPUTERS!
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COMMENT:
Sadly, this is nothing new or surprising. The government has been caught time and time again secretly colluding with industry to force people into their control mechanisms against their will and without their knowledge. No one wanted a to have their inspection sticker RFID tagged so that their vehicle could be tracked, but they rolled out the legislation anyway. We beat it once, but no doubt it will be back. No body wanted to pay extra for an automobile black box to monitor their every automotive move, but the auto industry is doing it anyway. And certainly no one wanted to have the government track their cell phone and spy on them, but never the less, it was done and in complete secrecy. They are aware that we can easily see through their schemes so they have to hide them. No longer can they simply invoke "safety" and have the population gladly accept the invitation to their track and control prison. Now they just do it and hope no one notices.
Devices capture everything you ever type, then can send it via your ethernet card to the Dept. of Homeland Security without your knowledge, consent or a search warrant each time you log onto the internet!
Freedom Of Information Act Requests For Explanation From DHS, refused.
I was opening up my almost brand new laptop, to replace a broken PCMCIA slot riser on the motherboard. As soon as I got the keyboard off, I noticed a small cable running from the keyboard connection underneath a piece of metal protecting the motherboard.
I figured "No Big Deal", and continued with the dissasembly. But when I got the metal panels off, I saw a small white heatshink-wrapped package. Being ever-curious, I sliced the heatshrink open. I found a little circuit board inside.
Being an EE by trade, this piqued my curiosity considerably. On one side of the board, one Atmel AT45D041A four megabit Flash memory chip.
On the other side, one Microchip Technology PIC16F876 Programmable Interrupt Controller, along with a little Fairchild Semiconductor CD4066BCM quad bilateral switch.
Looking further, I saw that the other end of the cable was connected to the integrated ethernet board.
What could this mean? I called the manufacturer's tech support about it, and they said, and I quote, "The intregrated service tag identifier is there for assisting customers in the event of lost or misplaced personal information." He then hung up.
A little more research, and I found that that board spliced in between the keyboard and the ethernet chip is little more than a Keyghost hardware keylogger.
The reasons a computer manufacturer would put this in their laptops can only be left up to your imagination. It would be very impractical to hand-anylze the logs, and very CPU-intensive to do so on a computer for every person that purchased a laptop. Why are these keyloggers here? I recently almost found out.
I called the police, as having a keylogger unknown to me in my laptop is a serious offense. They told me to call the Department of Homeland Security. At this point, I am in disbelief. Why would the DHS have a keylogger in my laptop? It was surreal.
So I called them, and they told me to submit a Freedom of Information Act request. This is what I got back:
Under the Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) the only items exempt from public disclosure are items relating to "law enforcement tools and techniques" and "items relating to national security."
The real life implications of this are plain: Computer manufacturers appear to be cooperating with the Department of Homeland Security to make every person who buys a new computer subject to immediate, unrestricted government recording of everything they do on those computers! EVERYTHING!
This information can be sent to DHS, online, without your knowledge or consent, without a search warrant or even probable cause! That's why this device is hard-wired directly into the ethernet card, which communicates over the internet!
I am not certain how long this information will be permitted to remain online for all the world to see before the government takes some type of action to attempt to have it removed from public view. I URGE you to take copy of this page immediately and spread this information to everyone you know immediately! The more people who find out about this, the more can protect themselves and raise a HUGE outcry to force government and computer manufacturers to immediately CEASE installing these devices in new computers!
So what are “keyloggers”? In short, software program and/or hardware installed on a computer.
What do “keyloggers” do? They covertly record every keystroke made on a computer keyboard and stores them for later retrieval. Some “keyloggers” are capable of recording 2,000,000 keystrokes, that’s the equivalent of 300,000 words or a years typing.
"Keyloggers" are easily installed on a computer by anyone who has access to that computer. Some companies use them to spy on staff. Some use them for industrial espionage and or theft of information such as bank account details and passwords.
I have personally used keyloggers in a computer lab environment, they are a powerful tool and I believe an invasion of privacy.
The “keylogger” identified in the above article is a different kettle of fish altogether in that it is integrated into internal components of the computer at the time of manufacture, and the ability for any covertly logged information to be remotely accessed and transmitted via the internet!
The New Zealand Connection:
Keyghost Ltd is a successful New Zealand company and is based in Christchurch. They are the inventors and manufacturers of the KeyGhost Hardware Keyloggers range of products. Their site contains a direct link for Government and US Government enquiries!!!!
Joined: 05 Nov 2003
Posts: 814
Location: Auckland, New Zealand
Posted: Thu Oct 06, 2005 9:38 pm Post Subject:
Thanks for posting this Azimuth. I saw this article myself and considered posting it, but really felt I just had to give it some consideration first - it seemed to be so significant, and I guess, I almost felt the story might be a fake. Like you, the sense of disbelief was powerful.
Well done for identifying the New Zealand connection - I wasn't aware of that.
If indeed this is straight up, the implications are staggering, however, not surprising...
Maybe a hammer would be more useful than those screwdrivers though!! :x
To be quite honest I'm not 100% sure of the veracity of this article either now........
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PCMCIA slot riser on the motherboard
Laptops do not have riser slots. Having been inside a couple of laptops it seems extremely doubtful anything that size could fit under the MOBO either.
I'll do a bit of research tomorrow if I get a chance.
I believe that everyone should work on the principle that every email / Google search/post is like a postcard that can be read by anyone... Also its not surprising that a system that was developed by the military (Arpanet) is being used to transmit and collect all this personal info...
Joined: 05 Nov 2003
Posts: 814
Location: Auckland, New Zealand
Posted: Fri Oct 07, 2005 10:13 am Post Subject:
Quote:
I believe that everyone should work on the principle that every email / Google search/post is like a postcard that can be read by anyone
Agreed and well said Lyra. :) This is the principle we work on now and have done for some time. Oddly enough, working on this idea generally demands from us a better standard of consideration and communication in the things that we write and publish - so it's not altogether a bad thing. :?
The initial article seems more dubious by the minute.
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I noticed a small cable running from the keyboard connection underneath a piece of metal protecting the motherboard.
A little bit ambiguous, as laptop internal keyboard connections are ribbons not cable.
The actual photos of the Atmel AT45D041A four megabit Flash memory chip and Microchip Technology PIC16F876 Programmable Interrupt Controller are real.
In fact they appear to be a KeyGhost product from a "Security Keyboard" keylogger with the heat sink material removed. With this product the keylogger is covertly incorporated into an external keyboard. See the link:
http://www.dansdata.com/keyghost.htm
As I mentioned in my earlier post I think it would be difficult to fit this particular item into a laptop because of its size and the very compact nature of the laptop.
Joined: 05 Nov 2003
Posts: 814
Location: Auckland, New Zealand
Posted: Fri Oct 07, 2005 1:02 pm Post Subject:
Azimuth wrote:
The initial article seems more dubious by the minute.
Hmmm. What interests me, is why someone would go to the time and trouble to produce this kind of misinformation/disinformation...
Is it to prepare the way to hide something much more subtle and perhaps mischievous? Once you plant a seed in people's minds about something ridiculous, it's easier to call on that perception later on, when you may actually have something genuine you want to conceal or dismiss...
Just a thought...
It brings to mind similar techniques being used in the media to deflect attention from what is happening in the world. Big Brother for example. Mention Big Brother these days, and very often, you'll get a blank look or people will think you're talking about reality TV. The meaning and implication of Big Brother (as in Orwell's book) has been depowered and diluted.
Didn't Orwell's 1984 used to be standard reading in the high school curriculum? I would be interested to know if it is still covered in schools now - I suspect not... We also read Huxley's 'Brave New World' and Orwell's 'Animal Farm'. Are such cautionary tales no longer considered to be relevant, important or worthy of study?
Hmmm. What interests me, is why someone would go to the time and trouble to produce this kind of misinformation/disinformation...
Indeed Mel.
Perhaps the article was designed more as a scenario rather than an actual event. The scenario is plausible, technically possible and executable by any number of interested agencies.
However, in reality why would the likes of the DHS go to all the bother of colluding with third party computer manufacturers to access peoples computers when they are perfectly capable of exploiting the many vulnerabilities in MS OSs’ and IE.
Would it not be more effective for the likes of the DHS or NSA to exploit these vulnerabilities, after all, over 80% of the computing world relies on MS Windows OS!
During late 1999 there was much ado after two independent computer security experts discovered the infamous “NSA_KEYs”, which were backdoor key codes allegedly prepared by the NSA and secretly built into every version of the MS Windows OS allowing the NSA access to virtually every computer running Windows.
Some called it another “conspiracy theory”, others not so and of course Microsoft denied any wrongdoing. The jury is still out on this one I believe.
