cnBeta
cnBeta
May 17, 2016 Creators of high-quality technology
Pay close attention
According to foreign media reports, the classified documents exposed by Edward Snowden revealed many complex tools used by the US National Security Agency (NSA) in data collection. But obviously, the NSA is not the only government agency in the United States that conducts surveillance operations on people. Like the FBI, it has been monitoring citizens for 20 years. "Wired" stated that the FBI's history of monitoring American people can be traced back to 20 years ago, but very little is known about the tools it uses and the specific content of its surveillance operations.
That's because the search warrants obtained by the agency provide little information about wiretapping techniques, and defense attorneys generally do not challenge the agency on this point.
Even so, Wired has compiled a list of tools used by the FBI in some attacks over the past few decades.
Predator is a traffic sniffer used by the FBI from 1998, and this action was endorsed by ISPs. Although Predator is set up as a metadata extraction tool, it can still collect vast amounts of communications if the FBI chooses to abuse it.
In addition, the FBI also developed a set of keylogger software to deal with early encrypted communication technology. This tool was first used in 1999 on the computer of Nicodemo Salvatore Scarfo, the mafia boss of the Cosa Nostra family.
In 2001, the FBI began to introduce a set of tools called Magic Lantern, which was a new generation of keyloggers that could be remotely installed on target computers. In addition to logging the user's keystrokes on the keyboard, it can also collect web browser logs, usernames, passwords, and external Internet interface logs.
In 2009, the FBI used a set of tools called CIPAV that could collect a target computer’s IP address, Mac address, registration information, username and recently visited URLs.
Three years later, the FBI began to use malware attacks to induce targets to download surveillance software, which was mainly used to investigate cyber crimes such as child pornography.
It is understood that some of the data collected by the FBI using these tools does not belong to suspects, but to ordinary people. Furthermore, it is unclear whether these practices are regulated.