Bavaria sanctions police spyware

illegal outside Bavaria ?

So do they have a kill-switch in case the suspect moves to another state or country ? After all, it would be illegal to spy on them outside the Bavarian jurisdiction.

@DC

And then promptly labelled as terrorist organizations. Lucky Bill has stepped down or he could be the next Osama

Depends on the signature

If they use an already-known piece of kit, no problems, it's gone in seconds. If it's customized - highly doubtful. The bane of all signature-dependent scanners... Which is why Winpatrol and the like is a must-have addition. It's the only piece of software to save me from malware in the last 10 years by noticing that something wanted to auto-start and didn't go away when told to. </blatant plug>

Truly moronic

What about when:-

a) Policeman X decides to use it to spy on Mrs X, Mrs X's suspected lover etc

b) The communication protocol is cracked by the Russian mafia.

c) The software is reverse engineered by "terrorists" and installed on Police PC's by blackmailing the cop in point (a).

Good idea lads.

and guess who's next

yup, that's right.

i think this is likley to become law here in UK too, judging by the UK gvt's overzealous preoccupation with monitoring us, removing our rights (especially any right to privacy), and outright controling us.

new gvt definition of terrorist:

anyone who doesn't agree with the government!

sigh! who are we anyway? just insignificant 'general public' civilians who have absolutely no say in anything. welcome to England.

do they work for

George Bush and Co? Sounds like his kind of dirty business. Let's just have a little spying on everyone, shall we. Don't have anything to hide if you're not guilty of anything? Think of the children. Think of the war on terror? Think of all the laws we're breaking (oops!). Rights? What are those? Liberties? Those at the top will still have theirs.

Unlikely that the software makers will tell you what they REALLY do with this kind of stuff; especially if they want to stay in business and not be shut down for "supporting terrorism". Break into your house to install it? Commit a criminal act to "protect us" from ??? Somebody tell me why these clowns aren't already in jail, please.

@Solomon Grundy

"Like most law enforcement tech, it will probably be illegal to include the police Trojans in AV libraries."

Sorry but how on earth do you imagine that the AV companies are supposed to know when they find malware whether or not it was planted by police/MI5/MI6/GCHQ etc. or the equivalent organisations in 100 different countries ? You imagine that said law-enforcement organisations are all going to provide copies of trojan software or a software suite with regular updates to identify law enforcement zero day exploits to every Tom, Dick and Harry of an AV or pentesting company whether based in the same jurisdiction or not ? Perhaps you think AV companies would be willing to delay releasing new malware signatures while the spooks decide whether to approve these ? Well it would certainly defeat their imagined security by obscurity of their malware techniques if they could approve or reject any AV software release.

Besides which, many criminals now have access to expert malware systems analytical and reverse engineering expertise themselves. This is how bot herders keep up with their competitors. It's also not as if it's that difficult automatically to image systems before and after a trojan/virus or worm installation to identify the differences resulting from malware installation - which gives you the malware those interested are looking for. Use of virtual machines and a few scripts cut out most of the effort this kind of thing used to involve. Some of my second year undergraduate security systems students are well up to this.

Your premise is based on a deeply flawed assumption: that there are sufficiently few IT security specialists with the capability to detect and analyse malware that all these specialists are inherently state- controllable.