Caught Installing Hard-wired Keystroke Loggers Into All New Laptop Computers!

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RicBrannon

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I didn't know if this was the right place to put this but thought everyone here would like to know.

GOVERNMENT AND COMPUTER MANUFACTURERS CAUGHT INSTALLING HARD-WIRED KEYSTROKE LOGGERS INTO ALL NEW LAPTOP COMPUTERS!

http://infowars.com/articles/bb/gov_caught_installing_keystroke_loggers.htm

This was sent to me by my brother and it seem a bit scary to me. I have pasted some of the info below but I can't put the photos up here so I put the link to the site up above. It will have the photos and explanation for each. What do you all think about this? It seems to me like they are really running with this patriot act and it may be getting out of hand.

Ric


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. The request was denied.

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!
 
I'm not sure yet. If you go to the site and see the photos it should help you know what to look for if you want to see if there is one in your box. But as for removing it I am not sure. I don't have a new enough lap top to experiment on. I'm thinking that there may be something in the firmware that will disable the computer if the key logger is removed. I don't know for sure if that’s the case but if there isn't I would imagine there will be soon. I'll keep everybody posted on what I find and all you other computer guys out there let me know if you find anything on this. Thanks.

Ric
 
Zeus36,
I looked on snopes but was not able to find anything. I guess I didn't set me search parameters right. Thanks again. I'll pass this along.

Ric
 
Software Keyboard loggers are becoming more and more common. One of the easiest and most cost effective methods (free) to defeat them and protect your passwords and log on names is through a program such as "roboform" which is installed on a flash drive. Plug the drive into your computer and it will automatically fill in your login and password for site from the info stored on the drive with no keystrokes typed. This info is password protected, and when you exit it removes all traces of itself from the P.C.. Just my $0.02.
 
This hoax has been floating around the net for years.. Snopes says they collected it in 2005, But I ran into a hoax like this in 2002.. (I had to disassemble my grnadfathers laptop to calm his fears)

The plain and simple fact is, it will never happen.. and if by some off chance it does, we'll hear about it from PC makers before anyone has a chance to find them in thier own systems. hardware keyloggers are insecure, including one in a system would leave PC manufactuers the target of dozens of Liability lawsuits. Imagine having your notebook stolen, with one of these in it.. Pass words, card numbers.. anything you typed in.. at the hands of the thiefs..

I'd sue too..
 
HK2001 said:
The plain and simple fact is, it will never happen.. and if by some off chance it does, we'll hear about it from PC makers before anyone has a chance to find them in thier own systems. hardware keyloggers are insecure, including one in a system would leave PC manufactuers the target of dozens of Liability lawsuits. Imagine having your notebook stolen, with one of these in it.. Pass words, card numbers.. anything you typed in.. at the hands of the thiefs..

I'd sue too..
Click to expand...

I don't know that it will never happen or that it couldn't happen. As in the hoax if it were done in conjunction with a government agency like Homeland Security, the manufacturers might not have much to worry about. The Patriot Act gives very broad leeway to law enforcement these days.
Also, as in the hoax, the key logger had a 4mgb onboard cash, with all the key strokes a person makes in a given day that would fill rather quickly if they typed a lot, say posting on blade forums...;-) And being able to pull that info off the computer is something else.
Now I wouldn't put it past our government to come up with something like this and even try to do it except for the fact that it would be very costly and we all know they pull most of this stuff off the net randomly anyway. Nothing is sacred any more and if it goes out on the web just about anyone can see it if they know how.

Ric
 
Cleaner 145's post about storing your PC info on a pass protected flash drive is the best advice I have had about protecting sensitive information from keylogger software.

Setting it up tomorrow, and will test run it to see how it goes with some deliberate hack attempts.

Thanks for a top idea.
 
BlueyM said:
Cleaner 145's post about storing your PC info on a pass protected flash drive is the best advice I have had about protecting sensitive information from keylogger software.

Setting it up tomorrow, and will test run it to see how it goes with some deliberate hack attempts.

Thanks for a top idea.
Click to expand...

Thanks BlueyM - I have been using it for about 4 months and I find that it works out pretty well. You can make it even more safe by encrypting the flash drive with something like "Remora" ( 128 bit, also free) if there is a concern the drive could be lost or stolen. With that a thief would not even have access to the Roboform program or any other data that you lock.

Cheers :thumbup:
 
The impractical part of this is that the government couldn't process all of the data that would be generated if all computers were monitored. However if the Men In Black really want to know what you are typing they have the technology to do it without adding anything to your computer. They just monitor the electromagnetic emanations of your monitor video inputs and they can see whatever you see.

The problem has been around since before computers were a consideration. When you sent encrypted data over wires your messages could be read and your code compromised if the enemy could pick up the electromagnetic radiation from the printer attached to your decoding device. For years the military has had "TEMPEST" standards for how you have to shield electronics that handles decoded data. They really get upset if you compromise codes. So you have to design military boxes with specially shielded subsections with specially shielded I/O connectors to prevent hints of signals getting out of the TEMPEST area on things like the power lines.

Guess what, your PC is not designed to TEMPEST standards. Your signals are particularly easy to pick up anywhere that they are transmitted serially. This is places like your connection from the keyboard to the CPU and the CPU to the monitor. The government is never going to bother putting keyloggers in your computer, they don't need to. And neither does any other reasonably technically sophisticated government in the world.

http://www.eskimo.com/~joelm/tempest.html
 
Jeff - I believe you are correct from a technology required standpoint, I think the issue would be from an application one. It would be nearly impossible to do extremely wide scale monitoring of computers using the available technology you mentioned. This is in sharp contrast to cell phone monitoring which is already taking place globally. An installed keylogger would allow for monitoring using key word descrimination, exactly as is being done with cell phones on a wide scale basis (Big Ears). Still this is a hoax. :thumbup:

Cheers

Andy
 
RicBrannon said:
Zeus36,
I looked on snopes but was not able to find anything. I guess I didn't set me search parameters right. Thanks again. I'll pass this along.

Ric
Click to expand...

Ric,

Just click my link and it will take you to the snopes site with the text of the hoax in the first post of this thread.
 
Jeff Clark said:
The problem has been around since before computers were a consideration. When you sent encrypted data over wires your messages could be read and your code compromised if the enemy could pick up the electromagnetic radiation from the printer attached to your decoding device. For years the military has had "TEMPEST" standards for how you have to shield electronics that handles decoded data. They really get upset if you compromise codes. So you have to design military boxes with specially shielded subsections with specially shielded I/O connectors to prevent hints of signals getting out of the TEMPEST area on things like the power lines.
Click to expand...

Jeff,
I don't think this is true, at least not any more. I have built plenty of servers for a couple major companies and they don't have this issue. They use a regular double walled coax cable that most PC components use in the open market. They had to come up with this double walled coax to prevent "cross talk" between systems on networks because of the way they band cables together in data centers. This cable is the industry standard now and it prevents cross talk or signal bleeding through the cable wall. The keyboards, mice, print cables and the like they sell now all come this way.
And if you think about the key loggers, it wouldn't be too hard for them to process that kind of info. They would just put it through a buffer that searched for key words and if any of those words were logged the message word be saved to a drive and flagged for review. That in itself would cut down on stored data by 90%.
So beside the fact that it would almost imposable for someone to read data on your system from the parking lot, providing it wasn't sent over the web, the hoax story was talking about laptops and all their parts are internal, no cables involved.

Ric
 
Quick update on Cleaner 145's tip about protecting passwords etc from keyloggers.

I downloaded "Roboform" and set it up and loaded it into a USB flashdrive.

Works perfectly, and although my computer file search skills are a bit limited, I couldn't find any trace of the passwords or private information once the flashdrive was ejected and removed.

Great idea, and very good peace of mind, knowing that data is protected even in the laptop is lost or stolen.

(backup of the data is on a CD, safely locked away)

Thanks again for a neat idea. What these forums are all about.

:thumbup: :thumbup:
 
The shielding in double coax will prevent crosstalk that crosses logic thresholds, but it is nowhere near adequate to prevent it from being picked up by directional RF equipment. Once you get to the end of the cable you go into equipment boxes that are only lightly shielded by TEMPEST standards. One of the major reasons for this is that we are talking about high speed CMOS digital drivers for the interface signals. These have very fast rise times with very broad frequency spectra. It takes some dramatic shielding to keep that in. It is particularly bad between digital boxes. You have endless problems with ground loops when you try and ground both ends of the shielding. You tend to end up with signals coupling onto the shields or onto the grounding system. If you really want to control RF emissions you have to slow down the rise-time on your interface signals. For example the old 1553 avionics bus used differential transformer-coupled signals with rise-time limited drivers. Going further the equivalent Macair avionics bus used sinusoidal signals for the serial digital data. You don't have anything like that in a PC. The only really secure interbox communications are generally fiber optic. So if you were running Fibre Channel or IBM Escon you wouldn't get cable emisions, but you'd still probably get it out of the SERDES at the receiver. You also would tend to get it out of the monitor or even the face of the monitor. That electron gun in the tube is sweeping a spray of electrons in a very rhythmic pattern. You get another chance to look at the character display every time the monitor refreshes (say 60 times a second). It is a bit better with an LCD display, but the data going to the screen is still a target.

PS. I spent about 15 years designing military processors and interfaces, 5 years designing PC interface chips, and 10 years designing digital integrated circuits. I have spent a lot of time worrying about signal integrity and emissions. The problems are real, and so is the NSA.
 
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