German gov't spyware stirs massive public concerns

A Trojan used by several German states to monitor Internet phone calls contains functionalities beyond the legal interception, stirring massive public concerns over the country's Internet surveillance.

The software in other words supposed to be a "lawful interception" program designed to monitor Internet-based phone calls as part of a legal wiretap goes far beyond the legal bounds, according to the Chaos Computer Club, a Germany-based hacker group.

The use of the backdoor program Bundestrojan

Germany allowed the use of the backdoor program Bundestrojan, which permits government investigators to listen in on Skype-based phone calls. Since 2008, Bundestrojan has been ruled legal by Germany's Federal Constitutional Court as long as it screened only very specific communications -- Internet telephone calls.

But the hacker club found the software, developed by a private company called DigiTask for the Bavarian police and several other states, was capable of logging keystrokes, activating cameras, monitoring Internet users' activities and sending data to government officials.

The Chaos Computer Club provided samples to F-Secure

The Chaos Computer Club provided samples to F-Secure, an Internet security company in Helsinki, which as well found the software had capabilities to intercept data entered into applications just as the web browser Firefox, the instant messaging programs MSN and ICQ.

Another renowned antivirus vendor, Kaspersky Lab, as well said the program has the capability of monitoring traffic from 15 Internet programs afterwards the security company analyzed the software's all five elements.

"Amongst the new things we found in there are two to put it more exactly interesting ones: Firstly, this version is not only capable of running on 32 bit systems; it as well includes support for 64 bit versions of Windows," said Tillmann Werner, a security researcher with Kaspersky in Germany.

The list of targeted applications includes major browsers, including Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera, as so then programs with VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) and data encryption functionality, including ICQ, MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, Skype, Low-Rate VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), CounterPath X-Lite and Paltalk.