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Fresh German police-malware uncovered; everything the police said in defense to date revealed as lies

Cory Doctorow at 6:34 am Sun, Oct 30, 2011

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More revelations on the official police-spread malware that Germany's Chaos Computer Club discovered in the wild and reverse engineered: pretty much everything the German police said in their defense turns out to be a lie. Another trojan has been uncovered, and it confirms the German police's depraved indifference and incompetence in their cyberwar efforts.

The excuses vary from "trial" to "prototype", DigiTask still insisted on October 11th 2011 to its governmental customers, that almost all problems are being solved in newer versions. The manufacturer DigiTask and the authorities view the functionality of code-reloading as a "natural need", for which the implication of fundamental rights violation is relative in any way. It serves a purpose, and therefore the aim justifies the means.

Therefore, the CCC now presents a more detailed technical documentation of a newer version of the "Staatstrojaner" from the year 2010.[3] The testimony of DigiTask [10] is the basis of a detailed report that serves as a euphemistic attempt to conceal its illegal nature. At the same time, both disassembled versions of the Trojan, commented by the CCC, were made publicly available in order to ensure the traceability of the findings and to facilitate further research by interested parties. [4]

„Even during the last three years, the authorities and their providers were clearly not capable of developing a "Staatstrojaner" which would meet the minimum of requirements for juridical evidence, basic law compliance and security against manipulation”, a CCC spokesperson summed up about the new findings. “By these concrete and principal reasons, it is logical not to expected that this would succeed in the future."

Chaos Computer Club analyzes new German government spyware

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE:  Civlib • germany • malware • privacy

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  • http://twitter.com/amanicdroid Mari Lwyd

    Violaters gonna violate.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/BigVic-Proton/1112763277 BigVic Proton

    If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.
    Adolf Hitler

    • http://twitter.com/amanicdroid Mari Lwyd

      I see what you did there.

    • http://twitter.com/Senjasolutions Ali Kurtze

      No, Goebbels said that. That’s what they kept telling me at least…

  • http://twitter.com/schoschie Niels Heidenreich

    In terms of understanding open networks and specifically the Internet, Germany is a developing country, probably even third-world. It’s just too painful to realize how grossly incompetent my government is, and how they keep lying to us, blatantly.

    • http://www.nathanhornby.com/ Nathan Hornby

      That’s what governments do best!

  • BarBarSeven

    Shocked the German police haven’t blamed Polish hackers yet for invading their firewall.

  • peterblue11

    Many of the CCC members are also Pirate Party Germany members and just now i finished watching the official news night of the “ZDF” (think BBC in the UK) and they still have the audacity to say the Pirate members have not contributed any value whatsoever to german politics. these hypocrites disgust me. 

  • Anon_Mahna

    And people think I’m crazy to not trust politicians/government people the 1 or so meter I can toss them..

    Governments are like a wish granted by a monkey’s paw…

  • Ipo

    Heaven: Where cooks are Italian, mechanics are German, police are English, lovers are French and everything is organized by the Swiss.

    Hell: Where cooks are English, mechanics are French, police are Germans, lovers are Swiss and
    everything is organized by the Italians.

  • ffabian

    Nice, an Article about Germany and in the first 10 comments 4 mention the usual Nazi-German stereotypes. If you’re looking for fascist governments these days you should look to the other side of the ocean (torture, ersosion of civil and humanitarian rights, lots of wars with hundred of thousand innocent dead etc).

    • Niel de Beaudrap

      Indeed. Intriguing how so many U.S. political idioms seem frozen in the ’50s (and even that particular one had definitively ceased to be accurate a few years before that).

      I think we should just call it a wash and accept that the majority of first-world countries are doing a worse and worse job of being liberal democracies.

  • dragonfrog

    I just finished reading the CCC’s PDF analysis of the new trojan (http://www.ccc.de/system/uploads/83/original/staatstrojaner-report42.pdf ).  I am hornswoggled.

    The basic and fundamental lack of understanding of any sort of security principles by the incompetent muppets who developed this thing is amazing.  It’s like they invented a time machine in order to recruit programmers from the 1980s.

  • Daniel Neumann

    A little more fuel for conspiracy theories: in 2002 DigiTasks (the “Staatstrojaners” developers) former chief got sentenced to 21 months on probation and 1.5 million euros fine for bribing the german Customs Investigation Bureau (ZKA) into buying DigiTasks technology.

    DigiTask also “won” a german Big Brother Award in 2009 for developing surveillance technology for german Police and secret services.

  • Gerrit Vogel

    going even further:
    Digitask belongs to Deloitte, one of the biggest consulting firms in the world. A member of the Think Tank like “Beirat” is former Minister of Internal Affairs (Innenminister) Dr. hc. Otto Schily. The Think Tank itself is chaired by former Bavarian premier Edmund Stoiber. Schily on the other Hand supported the terrorism-legislation after the 11. Sept. 01 attacks, which is the foundation for the “Bundestrojaner”.
    There you have one heck of a conspiracy theory.