Secret Warrants

[Bill Stewart]

At 06:50 PM 08/11/2001 -0500, Jim Choate wrote:
>On Thu, 9 Aug 2001, A. Melon wrote:
> >    What is needed, seriously needed right now, is some good, open source
> > surveillance dectection software. Something that would find key-logger
> > software or hardware, something that would check your phone line thru
> > your modem, maybe even could be used as a frequency analyzer with a
> > usb or serial port "antenna" connection for laptops.
> >     I'm sure this would be a really good commercial hit.
> > Especially if the price could be kept under $500.
>
>Try more like $50-100k...it will also require specific/special hardware,
>software alone is not enough.

It's not a request that makes sense -
- you can detect electromagnetic radiation emanating from your house,
         if you're willing to look at a wide enough range of frequencies
         and can differentiate from other similar radiation, such as that
         from your computer or your tv or cabletv or vcr or power line or PDA
         (if you're not in a single-family home) your neighbors.
         Costs money, probably too much work, difficult, but semi-possible.
= you might be able to detect changes in the analog side of your phone line,
         at least if they're twiddling it nearby where you can watch them,
         but they can diguise that by working from a Phone Company truck.
         You've got no chance of detecting tapping on the digital side.
- Neither of these methods will detect equipment that lurks around
         waiting for commands before transmitting.
- It's also difficult to detect elint eavesdropping hardware in your
         neighbor's place that's pointed at you, especially if you have 
many neighbors.
- It's difficult to detect black-box jobs that add hardware features to 
your PC;
         you might see bump-in-the-cord keyloggers, but you probably won't see
         anything hidden inside the case itself.  Epoxying everything together
         can reduce this risk, and increase the chances that you'll notice,
         especially if your PC is a laptop that you stick in the safe when
         you're not using it or carrying it.  But you're not that paranoid.
- It's difficult to detect software changes - you can discourage them by
         using a Real Operating System instead of Windows, and running
         things like Tripwire that detect changes in critical files,
         and of course making sure that nobody's snuck in and swapped the
         CDROMs of software you're using for bugged versions so that the
         next time your hard disk crashes and you need to reinstall Red Hat 
or Win2001
         or applications get hosed and you need to reinstall Palm tools or 
other apps that
         you're not getting bugware as well.

A much easier approach is to bug your own place - set up your cheap camera
         pointing toward your PC desk, with that small pc running
         motion detection and tracking who's been there.
         Or at least use a burglar alarm that's got some off-site or
         other reliable mechanism for telling you when you've been burgled.
         In Nicky Scarfo's case, picking alarm companies is a tough decision -
         being in a Mafia Watch neighborhood is find for non-players' 
protection,
         but players have to worry whether they're being set up by 
ex-friends...