Who's spying on you?

Posted on 5 May 2006 at 10:40

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At work, where the normal laws on privacy are subject to contract and policy, employers too have begun using keyloggers to weed out illegal activity. Perhaps most controversial, however, is the security services' use of the technology. Magic Lantern, developed and used by the FBI, is one such piece of software.

THE ENEMY WITHIN

While the personal cost to an individual who suffers a malicious keylogger infection can be great, in the right hands the sheer size of the crimes made possible by the use of such software is breathtaking. Last year, for instance, detectives from the National High Tech Crime Unit thwarted a massive theft at the London offices of the Japanese-owned Sumitomo Mitsui bank. The intention had been to steal £220 million; had the gang pulled it off, this figure would have dwarfed the UK's current largest robbery of £53 million.

The Sumitomo Mitsui plan called for nearly a dozen electronic transfers of cash into separate bank accounts in different countries, but the gang first needed to gain what looked like legitimate access to the bank's network. What better way than to use legitimate user credentials? When first detected, it looked as if there had been a very clever and sophisticated breach of electronic security from the outside, but as the investigation progressed, it emerged that the crime had also involved a breach of trust by employees using a keylogger. At the time Dan Morrison, a fraud partner at London law firm Mishcon Del Reya, told the BBC, "I'm struggling to think of a fraud case I've ever done which didn't involve an insider. It's not just access that's needed; it's understanding."

By exploiting quirks in the bank's practices and networks, the crooks, with inside help, deployed keyloggers on the bank's connection to the SWIFT network, used to perform international money transfers. Access to this meant they could freely transfer money to anywhere in the world. It would have worked, too, were it not for a suspicious employee raising the alarm. Police in Tel Aviv arrested one of the gang, Yeron Bolondi, and charged him with money laundering and deception after someone at the bank queried a suspicious transfer of £13.9 million into an Israeli bank account. This may be just the start of a new trend in high-tech bank robbery.

According to anti-spyware company Webroot (www.webroot.com), keyloggers could already infest up to 15 per cent of all corporate PCs, which is frightening enough for system administrators. But it could also mean a future filled with more opportunities such as the one exploited at Sumitomo Mitsui Bank.

Luckily, dedicated anti-spyware systems are good at detecting keyloggers. Regular updates prevent infections by new variants. After installing firewall, anti-virus and even intrusion-detection systems, anti-spyware represents a necessary fourth line of online defence.

As people depend more and more on cyberspace to run their lives, there's a clear need to keep abreast of the latest threats. Whether it is a good idea to ignore official uses of keyloggers, however, is less clear.

Author: Jon Thompson