Peter Sinclair: A new generation of snoopware

By PETER SINCLAIR

"Find out SECRETS about your relatives, friends, enemies and everyone else — even your spouse! The Software They Wanted BANNED In All 50 States!"

This hit my inbox last week from an outfit calling itself Cyber Investigator's Assistant (CIA) and most readers with an email account will have received spam like it.

To anyone with the slightest degree of sophistication, such "snooping software" is laughable or mildly irritating, involving nothing more than a quick trip to the "Delete" button.

Invasion of privacy originally went legit wearing the hypocritical mask of child safety online. Tight-lipped applications like NetNanny and Cyber Patrol began to dictate what kids couldn't see and monitor which ones were trying to see it.

Now, it could be the kids who catch you ...

For in a new generation of snoopware, the mask of morality has been cast aside to reveal the Orwellian face of Big Brother.

These new "stealth" applications are cheap and available. Yet they are, if you like, the domestic equivalent of the FBI's scary Carnivore, euphemistically dubbed a "diagnostic tool" by American security interests trying to force it on the rest of the world, including us.

There's the thoroughly nasty 007 Stealth Activity Recorder, consisting of two components: STARR, Stealth Activity Recorder and Reporter, is a monitoring tool which incorporates an invisible email autosender to copy the log-file to a distant PC via the net; and SAM, the Stealth Activity Monitor which logs user-names, passwords, path names, access times, web addresses and even keystrokes. All information collected by SAM, is stored in a tamper-proof encrypted text file.

Similar is Pearl Software's Cyber Snoop, touting itself for use in schools. There's a picture of two wholesome American teenage boys gazing down at something on screen ... exactly what is left to your imagination, but it's certainly brought a smile to their faces.

In the case of Spector, parents are not its target market.

Spector records all PC and internet activity as often as once a second, including all applications loaded, all websites visited, all chat conversations, all keystrokes, all incoming and outgoing e-mail.

The $US69.95 ($175) software offers lurid testimonials: "I own Spector ... it's magic ... it showed me within 24hrs that my wife stole in excess of $20,000 from our business ... gave me access to info that showed me where she met her lover ... it's magic."

In the words of Peter Lewis of the New York Times, it is "a program that runs on an operating system of distrust." In a matter of weeks, it's become a hot seller.

In "stealth" mode its operation is entirely invisible, its directories hidden, and only the person who installed it knows it's there. Later, Spector recordings can be replayed using a secret combination of keystrokes and passwords.

A companion application, eBlaster ($US59.95) is even uglier — it spies on computers to which the operator doesn't have regular access. It's a blackmailer's blessing, a divorce lawyer's dream.

Installable in minutes, it is completely undetectable and emails a log of all computer activity to any address specified, leaving no email-trail.

Pundits have been predicting the death of privacy. It looks as though they were right.

Tip: default hot-keys to reveal the presence of Spector on your machine are Ctrl-Alt-Shift-S; eBlaster will be revealed by Ctrl-Alt-Shift-T.

Links:

Net Nanny

Cyber Patrol

Stealth Activity Recorder

Spector