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Network Associates Buys "Better Carnivore"

Posted by michael on Tue Aug 27, 2002 10:52 AM
from the need-bigger-hard-drives dept.
Technology
ShaunC writes "CNet is reporting that Network Associates has just purchased a software company called Traxess, whose main product - DragNet - supposedly makes Carnivore look like a toy. DragNet is capable of monitoring everything from email to web, FTP sessions to IMs, even print jobs and VOIP conversations; sorting the protocols and logging it all to disk at gigabit speeds. One NAI exec envisions "the government using it to investigate employees and hackers." NAI has also issued a press release about DragNet."
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  • Haha, suckers! (Score:4, Funny)

    by FortKnox (169099) on Tuesday August 27 2002, @10:53AM (#4148951) Homepage Journal
    I am no longer filtering spam. I'll make those suckers wish they didn't monitor my email!!

  • Neat. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Wakko Warner (324) on Tuesday August 27 2002, @10:54AM (#4148960) Homepage Journal
    I will continue not caring as I use my SSH sessions with impunity.

    - A.P.
    • Eventually there's probably going to be a few high-profile break-ins or espionage. VPNs and/or SSH tunneling will become mandatory, and all this monitoring crap that takes advantage of remnants of the kinder, gentler computing world 20 years ago is going to be dead in the water.
    • Ha! Like SSH isn't vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks. (as is SSL).

      Sure, it's better than nothing, but Dug Song's work on Dsniff [monkey.org] (and the resulting controversy [oreilly.com]) clearly revealed that SSH is not a panacea to sniffing and/or session hijacking. In fact, with a compromised network host doing ARP spoofing it's probably nowhere near as secure as you think, especially if the clients and servers aren't set up with appropriate configurations. (i.e. only allow SSH2, don't allow log in as root, perhaps even use skey if necessary, etc.

      Also, if you use Windows, don't let WinSCP save your password in the registry. (as it tends to want to do so by default). WinSCP (and perhaps PuTTY?) also saves copies (unencrypted!) of any files you transfer in plain sight, right in your Windows temp folder! argh!)

      I'm not saying it's futile - SSH is a good step in the right direction, obviously miles ahead of Telnet or FTP, but it's not the cure-all some people seem to think it is. So, you might want to think twice about how "secure" your little SSH session is before bragging about it on /.

      Otherwise, you're just drawing attention to yourself. (shh! the feds might hear us. ;-)

  • Okay, this is a no-brainer, but... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by StupidKatz (467476) on Tuesday August 27 2002, @10:57AM (#4148977)
    Encrypt your traffic!

    They might see that it is SMTP traffic, but they can't see what you wrote. They might see it's web traffic, but they can't see exactly what it is. They might see an ssh session, but they can't sniff your root password. (Thanks to sftp, they can't grab your password there, either!)

    Since some protocol headers can't very well be encrypted, there's no good reason to try running services on alternate ports; maybe now I can finally get my friends to install PGP (or similar) on their machines.
    • The problem with encrypting HTTP is that SSL requires one IP address for every VirtualHost. If we suddenly turned off HTTP on all of our VirtualHosts (something I am in favour of) then we would reallize we ran out of IPs. The solution simply is to switch to IPv6, like now.

      • Wouldn't a better solution be wider adoption of TLS in place of SSL, as TLS can start encryption after virtual host negotiation, and can run of port 80 as well?

        • Actually, TLS (RFC2246) cannot do what you are describing. You are refering to HTTP over TLS (RFC2818) which can switch between unencrypted and encrypted modes with a directive (like STARTTLS). You're right in that this would be ideal, but it's going to be some time before browsers adopt this, I'm afraid.
    • Since back in the day...

      Never write an email that you would mind the world reading. An old addage that holds true...

      My accountant actually asked me to email him my figures for the year.... Umm no
    • Actually, I'd use IPSec. When you use IPSec, even the destination port is part of the encrypted payload. They wouldn't be able to tell what kind of traffic it was, just where it was headed.

    • Re:Okay, this is a no-brainer, but... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by pesc (147035) on Tuesday August 27 2002, @11:41AM (#4149365)
      Sorry, but encryption really does not solve the problem. It helps (a teeny weeny bit), but if you think you are safe just because you use encryption, think again.

      They might see that it is SMTP traffic, but they can't see what you wrote

      Yes, they can see that you are mailing newjobs@careerpath.com, sales@cybersex.com and tipping off anonymoustips@big.newspaper.com, but they can't see what you actually wrote.

      They might see it's web traffic, but they can't see exactly what it is
      They can see that you frequent www.goatse.cx, but they can't see what you saw. They may have to go there themselves...

      They might see an ssh session, but they can't sniff your root password
      They can see that you ssh to our.competitor.com and eevil.haxors.md, but can't see what you are doing. Time to target some other surveillance techniques on you!

      Yeah, you are leaving them completely in the dark by using super-duper cant-ever-crack-this 128-bit encryption...

          • Turnabout is fair play (Score:4, Insightful)

            by ArcSecond (534786) on Tuesday August 27 2002, @12:24PM (#4149828)
            Okay, if the cops get to watch us all the time with cameras, why don't they let us watch too? Why not put the closed circuit feed onto the net, or cable tv? I mean, have you ever put a camera on a cop before? I have. They aren't exactly happy about it, and you can argue all you like, but they have intimidation down to a science. But if they can watch us, why can't we watch them?
            • This is a totally different issue here.
              It's not the tool but how it has been used which was the problem.

              Exactly the same thing as when you claim that they should not prohibit new technologies because it is their use which can be bad.

              Public surveillance cameras are not inherently bad, they can be used for bad things tough.

              And honnestly, you really think they need to place cameras in public place to track you?
              If you ever happend to be of such interest to the police/fbi/whatever that they want to track your activities, I promess you they have better and more reliable ways of doing it then following your moves downtown on cameras.

  • Better than.... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I am the only one who read "better carnivore" as "sharks with lasers"?

  • IPSEC (Score:4, Insightful)

    by danheskett (178529) <danheskett AT gmail DOT com> on Tuesday August 27 2002, @11:00AM (#4149011)
    I cant help but wonder when IPSEC will - if ever - get off the ground. In most typical situations its very easy to setup - in a Win2k network it is literally a few clicks and all that traffic is gloriously and pretty transparently encrypted. Would a product like NAI has now catch that type of stuff unencrypted? Does it operate at a workstation?

    I think something big and major like this might be enough to get the wheels turning in peoples head.

    Technology can cut both ways - and companies like NAI are usually going to be behind the eight ball so to speak. I mean, in the arms race of encryption, the one utilizing the encryption (and not the one trying to break the crpto) usually has the leg up.

    Well, NAI is a junk company anyways.
    • Re "Junk company" -- well, here's the comment in the article that disturbed me the most:

      "After acquiring more than 40 companies from 1994 to 1998, Network Associates took a break to restore profitability and integrate its new additions. The Traxess deal is Network Associates' first buyout in four years."

      That's 40 companies, and gods know how many products, that for the most part vanished off the landscape. Why compete with another product when you can buy it out and kill it? And remember, NAI/McAfee's antivirus is the one that requires every sort of Windows scripting vulnerability be enabled to do auto-updates (and yes, I know what McAfee said about creating a market for antivirus products). Makes me feel just SO confident in whatever they might do with a sniffer-type product. [/cynic]

      So where does one find this IPSEC?

  • I hope that if they put that much effort into it, it can act as man-in-the-middle for all your ssh traffic.

  • excellent (Score:4, Funny)

    by tps12 (105590) on Tuesday August 27 2002, @11:05AM (#4149050) Homepage Journal
    Wow, this technology sounds incredible. Anyone who's run a packet sniffer on even a smallish office LAN (for debugging network problems, I swear! :) knows that it's nearly impossible to keep all of the different ports, protocols, and IP addresses straight.

    It'll be great to see what law enforcement can do with this. I imagine if we'd had this kind of tech in place a year ago, we might have averted 9/11 altogether, so maybe this will help ensure it never happens again. Imagine the power: wondering if Tom R. O'Layman is funnelling money to the IRA? Just click a button and check out his emails, phone calls, and web history. It looks like we're headed toward a new era of public safety.

  • Pr()n Net (Score:3, Funny)

    by GibsonSundman (599726) on Tuesday August 27 2002, @11:05AM (#4149051)
    So, the govt and nai will then be opening the worlds largest pr()n sites from the stored cache?
  • If joe user would wake up and learn to encrypt his email (GnuPG [gnupg.org]). Alas, I have ranted about that to many times. No one listens.
    • Well for the most part joe public doesn't care .... Hell I don't care if the FBI finds out my master plan for friday night (get shit faced and hopefully laid).

      If you feel that your email is important enough to encrypt good for you .... some of us dont need it.

  • GollumSoft (Score:5, Funny)

    by pete-classic (75983) <hutnick@gmail.com> on Tuesday August 27 2002, @11:09AM (#4149090) Homepage Journal
    Traxess, formerly known a GollumSoft.

    We traxess it, doesn't we, precious. Yesss, we traxess and logsess all its nasssty little emailsess.


    -Peter
  • the whole internet. While it's obviously no good that something like this exists, I'm not too worried. Sure RIT (the college I'm at) could install one of these systems and see what I do, but there is no way that anyone can watch the whole internet. And as other have said, encryption is nice. VNC is encrypted too.
    • VNC passwords aren't encrypted. Tunnel it through ssh.

      RIT doesn't need to run this, the students are already reading your email. Just go sit in the library or sau cafeteria, pull a roaming IP, and sniff dce passwords on port 143. (Why does one of the most wired colleges in the country not have ssl for imap?!). Then register the sucker for 8am basket weaving. Or drop all his classes.
  • I hope it has fun monitoring my SSHv2 connections. Traffic analysis is fine with me. Eavesdropping on plaintext conversations is not.

    Everyone should use good encryption! The EFF should start a fund to develop easy to use encryption infrastructure for the masses.

    Needed:

    FTP clients that transparently use SFTP whenever possible, and warn the user when their session is unencrypted.

    Seamless plugins to mozilla-mail and other popular standalone and web-based email clients to allow for easy key-exchange, signing, and encryption. Ideally the email client would automatically encrypt whenever it had the recipient's public key, and there was an automated mechanism to retrieve that key via an email attachment. Likewise, the client would automatically sent out attachments with your public key to all your recipients along with your normal email so others could use them.

    Encrypted IM. Jabber, please save us. IM clients should be written to prefer jabber servers over "all your conversation are belong to us" style servers such as AIM and MSM.

    FreeNet. Take however long it is necessary to do the right thing. Just don't give up. We need you.
    • Make everything encrypted and make it easy to use.

      If it is really easy to use, it will likely be insecure anyway.

      It is safer to have people know it is insecure and act as such, then to operate under a false sense of security because they use N-bit encryption.
    • If you want encrypted IM for over a standard network, you can always give Miranda [sourceforge.net] a shot. Setting up the GNU PG plugin with it can take a little bit of work, but it's possible.

      I agree with you, though; something as simple as this should be included right out of the box with every chat client.
  • ...What's the big deal? Seriously?

    a.) It's a computer sniffing the traffic. No big deal. I prefer a computer getting nauseated by my lovenotes to my gf than a human.

    b.) Who's been busted by it? I mean if I saw a story saying somebody was improperly jailed over it, then yeah I'd be all over getting it removed.

    c.) Who didn't expect this after 9-11? What I think will happen is they'll sift through the data and realize "there's nothing we can do to use this to stop another attack." However, if everybody stars PGP'ing everything, then they won't stop until they've got the technology to break encyrption. The good news is that it might aceellerate development of a quantum computer, but once that's done you're hosed.

    d.) Despite what scifi movies tell us, the Gov't can't really use this to control anybody. What resources do they have to use this for blackmail? "Heh, you think my wife's going to believe I had cybersex with a 13 year old? HAHAHAH!" It's not like the United States is hiding a Clone Army ready to swoop down and restore order.

    e.) You're not being very smart if you're putting sensitive info on the net to begin with. Never mind the Gov't, somebody could be watching everything you do right now. It might be your employer, it might be a curious trainee at your ISP, it could be somebody playing with one of the servers routing your data. If info you are transmitting around the net is so sensitive you don't want the gov't anyway, you'd best be encrypting it anyway instead of acting surprised. Security on the internet is a pipe-dream. It wasn't built that way. Heck, this post is going to go through 19 different computers before it gets to the Slashdot server. You guys are worried about carnivore variants? You guys should be worried that you can't attain privacy on the internet PERIOD.

    So maybe I'm being naieve, but I don't see it is a huge stinking threat that wasn't already there. It's certainly not going to change my privacy habits.
  • The technology itself is fine, and potentially beneficial, if properly and very narrowly used. It could accomplish a lot of good. But any good it could accomplish would be obliterated by the vast rights violations that would take place if it was mis-used.

    In other words, this technology should be controlled by courts, which would grant access to government agencies to use it (i.e., by giving a temporary pass for limited purposes) for very specific and targetted purposes, when warranted by probable cause or reasonable suspicion.

    But if we fear this kind of technology and want to outlaw it off-hand, declaring the technology evil, then we're no better than the RIAA/MPAA, who want to ban technologies (DVD-R(W), DVD-RAM, CD-RW, CD-R, P2P, etc) simply because they *can* be used for illegal purposes.

  • Gives their slogan a new meaning! (Score:4, Funny)

    by WolfWithoutAClause (162946) on Tuesday August 27 2002, @11:22AM (#4149213) Homepage
    Check out their slogan on their homepage:

    "Your network. Our business."

    My motto is:

    "My network. None of your business." but I guess that is where they and I have a parting of the ways... ;-)

  • It's a million-to-one chance ... But it might just work!

    We need to kill this YRO-infringing monster by getting the people who own the rights to the DragNet TV series to sue these guys' asses off :-)

    Fire with fire.

  • I don't know about the rest of you, but when I hear the words "Drag" and "Net" together [imdb.com], all I can imagine is Dan Akroyd as Det. Joe Friday doing the Can Can in Goatskin trousers..

  • I bet that Maxtor, frustrated by low demand for their 160GB ATA133 drives, created this software. By running it, customers would fill up hard drives "at gigabit speeds." Brilliant!
  • it was:

    cxzncf fdsajffirtur9340 saaafaa))P)Pf djfkjccn,fggrr irifk sdafjogjfklgurejg isafhsiohgosfu hfhgjpiogurio[a t589dfsmsapppyQ!3 hgvwerut90307948yt89ryudpojps [k]aitw90ug sup'hk

    They admitted though they were stumped about what it said.

  • This already exists! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by XaV_K (587510) on Tuesday August 27 2002, @11:51AM (#4149463)
    Whilst this story may grab the headlines, an application that has very similar functionality already exists and can be purchased today. I have a friend who works for Silent Runner ( http://www.silentrunner.com/ ) and believe me, this is already selling well to top corporates and governments / police forces here in Europe. Created by Raytheon, who work closely with US Government on many levels (NSA, CIA, Military - they make the software for the Patrior missile etc), Silent Runner is the one to look out for today. This announcement by NAI is them attempting to play catch up in the market. Their product is not yet ready to sell (ie you can't buy it today), whilst SR are quietly installing themselves in many large organisations. Big brother is already here!

  • An infinite number of monkeys... (Score:5, Funny)

    by fmaxwell (249001) on Tuesday August 27 2002, @12:06PM (#4149639) Homepage Journal
    Imagine the poor sods that have to go through the captured data. They'd get to read stuff like this all day:

    HotHoney4462: I am a porn star.
    StudMan217: Send me your picture!
    HotHoney4462: I don't have one on my computer.
    StudMan217: Do you have a scanner?
    HotHoney4462: No. But my friends tell me I look like Pamela Anderson...
    {...}
    133t_dewd: i still cant run the password cracker you sent.
    Neo4329542: what happens?
    133t_dewd: i cant find it.
    Neo4329542: where did you save it?
    133t_dewd: i dont know -- i just hit okay.
    Neo4329542: click on my computer.
    133t_dewd: how? i can't see your computer...
    {...}
    Mom,
    > Here's a picture of your father on
    > the new tractor.
    There was no picture attached. could you
    send it again?
    > The TV has been broken since you left. I turn
    > it on and the screen is black except for three
    > green letters in the upper left that say DVD.
    > But there is no DVD in the machine. I ejected
    > it twice and checked.
    You have to hit the input select button on the
    remote until you see a picture. It says DVD
    because I played that one for you when I was there.


    The biggest problem that they face is replacing people who commit suicide after about a week of reading that stuff.

  • Kinda Like NetIntercept, but NA doesn't advertise (Score:3, Informative)

    by FuriousJester (7941) on Tuesday August 27 2002, @12:54PM (#4150189) Homepage
    Except NetIntercept [sandstorm.net] is available now, and DragNet is avaialable in 2003 [internet.com]. Oh, and NetIntercept comes with SSH2 decryption by default. (It involves compromising one half of the connection.) And NetIntercept is silent on the monitored wire, making it difficult to detect or tamper with.

    There is also Raytheon's SilentRunner and Niksun's NetDetector. But while the privacy wonks are running scared, they are missing the essential usefulness of these tools. It's for forensics - something goes wrong, you can go back and see what it was. I can't comment for the other tools, but NetIntercept makes digging 500,000+ connections from 2 weeks ago easy.

    Yes, I work for Sandstorm. Our motto, "Tools with Sharp Edges". Its a fun company.

  • Why this should bother you (Score:4, Interesting)

    by moc.tfosorcimgllib (602636) on Tuesday August 27 2002, @01:03PM (#4150270) Journal
    Collecting the data now doesn't bother me. What bothers me is when I look for a new job 20 years from now, only to have my potential employer pull out a breifcase that holds EVERYTHING I've done on the internet since 2002 (Including all encrypted stuff, I'll bet brute force methods are a lot easier with faster computers).
    But for me, that isn't a big deal, I'm already an adult. What happens for my kids, where they have their entire lives scrutinized before being given a job? What happens if they get in some trouble and are put in juvenile detention, but then they clean up their act? Will that be a permanent black marker on their file for the rest of their life?
    What if they have controversial ideas or views?
    This isn't about data mining for the present, when you are a sheep in the herd, no one will notice you. When people look at you as an individual, they will know everything about you, personal history and otherwise, that is what this is about.
    Have you ever run a google search on someone? Imagine the results coming up with everything that person has done on the web, and being able to make sure it IS the person you wanted to look for.
    • Well there is one positive thing to this story, the fact that a private sector company got a hold of this software before the govt. did. At this in this case, NA will be somewhat hesitant to allow the government to use this technology

      Um, do you really think if the government flashed enough money at NA, they wouldn't sell it in a heartbeat? This is a corporation we're talking about here. Wish I didn't have to be so cynical, but I have this gut feeling the next press release will be how NA signed a multimillion deal with the NSA/FBI for this new product.

      The problem with new technology is that people marvel at what they can do so much that they don't stopt to think whether it should be done or not (thank you Jurassic Park for that one). Yeah, this system may have wonderful uses, but it's got much more capacity for abuse by both the private sector and the government. "Oh look, you're sending encrypted data? You must be a terrorist...let's drag you in for questioning and take all your equipment while we're at it. It may take us a few years to clear your name, but it's all in the name of national security" :(

    • I don't know... there are a lot more laws limiting what the FBI can do with technology like than there are limiting what a private company can do with technology like that. Not to mention, there's absolutely no information about me that the FBI would find useful in the least; there's tons of information corporations might like to have. Of course, the reality is, this won't change my use of the Internet in the least, but it's food for thought.
    • Oh god, who slipped the libertarian-drug into your coffee this morning?

      [sarcasm]Yeah, I'd much rather a private company have ahold of this. I defiantely support the use of this product as a means of spying in order to profit (why else would a company use it?) rather than using it for spying on citizens to enforce national security.[/sarcasm]

      Here's a newsflash: If this thing came through your door, rippied out your internal organs, and spat on them, a private company would still sell to the highest bidder. At least the government is only interested in the supposed security of its citizens (ignoring for the moment that their attempts may be misguided) .. NA would give this power to *anyone*, *without* the onus of being public regarding its use like your government must be.

      Why retards^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hpeople like you would rather place a gun in a hands of a group that needn't be transparent and accoutable regarding its use is abolutely beyond me. The market is big enough to support 'evil' consumers that would use this software in a way you wouldn't approve of, and to boot, wouldn't even have to tell you. Your government doesn't have that priviledge nearly to the extent that private corperations have, and still people shit on them for some stupid reason.
    • "As long as this technology is not used against whites, what is the big deal?"

      I'm curious how the Gov't is supposed to know what my nationality is. Heh. The best they're going to get out of my /. data is that I'm reptillian. The only terrorist act that a gator's ever commited is the suicide eating of an upper-class golfer.

    • FYI - There are no such things as civil liberties. The U.S. Constitution never mentions them. The ACLU, for example, believes in only the ones they think we should have and makes up some that could not otherwise exist. Statists like to call them that so that they can be taken away or sold - after all, they only exist through civil (government) fiat.

      There are only human rights. When people tread on them they are acting less than human. They are undeniable, inalienable, and exist regardless of your race, citizenship, or religion. The U.S. Constitution is the only one that recognizes this and which does not claim to grant such rights. Alas, it's been long since abandoned and now we are reduced to discussing "civil rights".

      When you lose the language, you lose the ability to defend the things it used to represent. Stop using the language of the enemy and insist that they recognize and respect your human rights and individual liberties. Live up to your personal responsibilities.
    • criminals can be caught quicker (or even before the act)

      That is scary. Get them before they do anything illegal. People are scared and jumpy, they want something to happen, but arresting people before they commit a crime is wrong.

      It is already illegal to plan a crime, now we're going to bust people for "maybe thinking about planning a crime". This is nuts.

    • Re:Torn (Score:3, Insightful)

      by SirSlud (67381)
      > glad that things are moving in a direction so that criminals can be caught quicker (or even before the act)

      Have you ever heard of the cliff metaphor when discussing technology as solutions to problems?

      This town had a cliff. Kids kept falling off the cliff, so they put an ambulance and a few nurses at the bottom. So, people got less careful around the cliff, and more folks fell off. So they added more ambulances and more medical staff. A small group of people in the town wanted to put some signs up at the top of the cliff saying, "Do not approach the cliff. In doing so, you are at your own risk," and conducting some classes around the town on how the cliff is not to be triffled with. But they were ignored. More ambulances, more nurses, more technology were added. Soon, everybody in the town was falling off the cliff. Nobody could act in a responsible manner, since the technological barriers were in place to prevent real-world (tm) tragedy.

      This is the real problem. In placing all our eggs in the technology basket, we might be better at catching criminals, but we're doing very little to try and resolve the problem of why people are criminals in the first place. If you ask me which is the smarter society, the one that treats the symptoms, or the one thay tolerates symptoms to deal with cause of the problem, I'll take the society that can exercise tolerance and sacrifice for the overall good of the future. Unfortunately, the cliff story above is particularly blasphemous to the lifeblood of the american economy, the entrepeneur, although it would be music to the ears of all the folks getting BA's in psychology and sociology. Think about it .. placing more emphasis on the analysis of why people do these things could save millions of BA grads from Starbucks and Footlocker jobs, and prevent the american economy from becoming 100% service/retail/maintenance based in the future.
    • Check this [cam.ac.uk] out. This FAQ regarding Palladium, in addition to the endless quest to engage in unreasonable searches (a al Carnivore and its brethren), are going to make for some interesting times. It gives rise to what I think is an important question - what happens when one or more private entities act in consort with a government to subvert the premises on which a society is founded?

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