Germany declares hacking tools 'verboten'
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Crackers Updates to Germany's computer crime laws banning so-called "hacking tools" have been criticised as ill-considered and counterproductive.â¦
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A decision from Germany's highest court resolves confusion over police power to covertly install spyware on the computers of suspected criminals.
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(InfoWorld) - The German government has agreed to implement a sweeping set of security measures aimed at protecting critical IT infrastructure in the country. The measures are part the National Plan for Protection of Communications Infrastructure approved more than two years ago by the German federal government and applicable to all federal departments and agencies. The move to implement the plan follows last week's German media report about continuedÂ efforts by Chinese hackers to plant Trojan horse programsÂ on government computers. Security experts from Germany's Federal Office for Information Security and Federal Data Protection Office discovered in May Trojan horse programs in computers used in several government ministries, including the Foreign Ministry, the Ministry of Economics and the Research and Development Ministry, as well as Chancellor Angela Merkel's office, and say theÂ attacks by Chinese hackersÂ continue, the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel reported on Aug. 27. The IT security policies that the federal government will implement have been developed in cooperation with more than 30 large German companies that offer critical infrastructure services such as electricity, natural gas, banking, and telecommunications, and depend on secure and reliable communication systems to operate their networks. The companies have also agreed to implement the IT security measures within their organizations. With Islamic radicals targeting German troops and others working in Afghanistan in recent weeks, government officials, including Federal Interior Minister Wolfgang SchÃ¤uble, point to a heightened threat level that makes IT security an issue of increasing urgency. Additional information about the IT security plan is available on the federal government's Web site. Â
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Leaked classified documents could point to a Skype and SSL intercepting system that could be launched in southern Germany next month.
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We have ways of hearing you talk German cops are pushing ahead with controversial plans, yet to be legally approved, to develop "remote forensic software" - in other words, a law enforcement Trojan.â¦
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Moves by several European countries to tighten laws against computer hacking are concerning security professionals, who often use the same tools as hackers.
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PC Tools' Malware Research Center reports a 57  percent increase in keylogging activity affecting both the consumer and  enterprise users in Europe and the United States.
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Deutsche Bank AG was the target of a renewed phishing attack late Tuesday extending into Wednesday, after facing its first-ever reported assault last week, according to a bank spokesman.
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By Matt Moore  FRANKFURT, Germany - Some European countries are proposing outlawing the use of fake information to open e-mail accounts or set up Web sites, a move intended to help terrorism investigations but which could face resistance on a privacy-conscious continent.
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A group of software engineers with ZERT has issued what it characterizes as an interim patch for the VML exploit, possibly closing the door to a new series of Trojans. In so doing, a new group resurrects some old questions about whether third parties should be trusted to patch Microsoft products.
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on  Friday that Germany must allow security services to use the  Internet to track terrorist suspects&#39; online movements.
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Anonymity ist verboten Google is threatening to close the German version of Gmail if the Bundestag goes through with new laws to ban anonymous email accounts.â¦
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(InfoWorld) - New legislation proposed by the German government aims to makeÂ computer hackingÂ a punishable crime. The draft law, announced Wednesday, defines hacking as penetrating a computer security system and gaining access to secure data, without necessarily stealing data. As part of the draft, groups that intentionally create, spread or purchase hacker tools designed for illegal purposes could be punished by law, the Federal Ministry of Justice said in a statement. OtherÂ punishable cybercrimesÂ include denial-of-service attacks and computer sabotage attack on individuals, which would extend the existing law that limited sabotage to businesses and public authorities. Offenders could face up to 10 years in prison for major offenses. Although Germany already has a comprehensive penal law against attacks on IT systems, the proposed revision aims to close any remaining loopholes, the ministry said. Some security experts warn, however, that "good" hackers, also known as "white hats" who work for security companies, could be restricted in their ability to help software makers and businesses as a result of the proposed law. If hackers can't share their tools with the public, "white hats will not be able to get them and use them internally for testing or external security consultants won't be able to do security testing," a hacker, known by the pseudonym van Hauser, wrote in an e-mail. "It's a win-lose law in favor for the bad guys." Van Hauser is president of The Hacker's Choice, a noncommercial group of security experts.
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(InfoWorld) - A new version of the IcePack hacker exploit tool kit has been released, security researchers warned Tuesday, and for the first time it includes attack code designed to exploit an unpatched, or zero-day, Microsoft vulnerability. Three of IcePack's eight exploit tools are new, said Roger Thompson, chief technology officer at Exploit Prevention Labs. That's noteworthy in and of itself, Thompson said. "The mix of old and new exploits is to be expected, but three new ones in one update is pretty impressive," he noted. But the new tool kit also sports a first. "The latest iteration has done something original," said Thompson, pointing to an exploit that attacks a zero-day vulnerability in Microsoft's DirectX software development kit (SDK). "The closest to a tool-kit zero-day exploit [before] was for the ANI [animated cursor] vulnerability." He was referring to a Windows bug that surfaced in early April. By the time that Mpack, an IcePack predecessor, added the ANI exploit, however, Microsoft had patched the vulnerability with an emergency out-of-cycle update. The DirectX SDK bug was disclosed by Polish researcher Krystian Kloskowski in a post to the milw0rm.com site in mid-August. Microsoft did not release a fix for the flaw in the regularly scheduled updates issued earlier Tuesday. IcePack is only one of several click-to-attack malware tool kits in circulation. Derived from the earlier Mpack, IcePack joins others boasting monikers such as NeoSploit and WebAttacker that cater to what Thompson called "lazy crooks." "Originally there was just WebAttacker, but they screwed up and then NeoSploit came along," Thompson said as he rattled off the exploit tool kit genealogy. "Then there was Mpack, which everyone at first thought was just WebAttacker, but it wasn't. Now there's IcePack." He estimated that nine to 12 malware tool kits are currently in use. "They all use very similar code, and they're all trying to make a buck out of selling to lazy crooks," said Thompson. Even though the just-updated IcePack features the first zero-day attack code seen in a malware kit, Thompson downplayed the threat. Sort of. "This is not an end-of-the-world kind of thing, since not many people will have the [DirectX] SDK. But no one knows what other software packages use that [vulnerable] ActiveX control. It's a little like Russian roulette that way." Other researchers confirmed Thompson's assessment. Symantec, for instance, warned customers of its DeepSight threat network that it had spotted in-the-wild attacks using the DirectX exploit. Symantec's researchers also confirmed that the other two exploits new to IcePack target vulnerabilities in Yahoo Messenger and Yahoo Widgets. Both of those bugs, however, have been patched. Taking aim at patched vulnerabilities is a common characteristic of multistrike kits, even though it might seem counterintuitive, said Thompson. "They usually go after lesser-known vulnerabilities," he said.
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Chinese hackers have infiltrated German government computers with spy programmes, the news magazine Der Spiegel reported Saturday. via Earth Times
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It's no secret that Microsoft employs individuals that attempt to bypass the security restrictions built into its software products in order to make them safer, but the company has rarely publicized this fact. That's changing with a new Web log called hackers @ microsoft.
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The IcePack hacker exploit toolkit has three new tools in its collection, including one that targets a zero-day flaw in Microsoft's DirectX software development kit.