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Detekt is a free tool that scans your computer for traces of known surveillance spyware used by governments to target and monitor human rights defenders and journalists around the world. By alerting them to the fact that they are being spied on, they will have the opportunity to take precautions.
It was developed by security researchers and has been used to assist in Citizen Lab's investigations into government use of spyware against human rights defenders, journalists and activists as well as by security trainers to educate on the nature of targeted surveillance.
Amnesty International is partnering with Privacy International, Digitale Gesellschaft and the Electronic Frontier Foundation to release Detekt to the public for the first time."
The Windows version can be downloaded here; other than source code there doesn't seem to be a Linux or iOS specific version. More general information is here.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Monday August 03 2015, @02:08AM
There's not much chance of your Linux computer being infected with this stuff. For Windows, it's useless because spyware is baked right into the OS, so what's the point of scanning it for more? It's all over the news that Windows 10 is packed with spyware right from MS. If you use Windows 10 willingly, then you're in fact consenting to be spied upon, and have no right to complain about it.
What we really need is a spyware detector for Android phones: it'd be really interesting to see what kind of stuff is going on on the countless older-version phones out there (which is most of the Android market, since Google and the handset makers refuse to issue any updates).
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @02:16AM
"There's not much chance of your Linux computer being infected with this stuff. "
Actually, there is.
A company in the news recently (unrelated to Detekt) has released scanners and the source for Windows AND Linux. The story has made the rounds at various techie news places, even buck feta, but the news was met with a mutual distrust, as they had worked with a TLA in designing it and the masses had not heard of the company before and were not quick to trust it.
The really bad malware is cross platform.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @02:45AM
the company name might be Rook Security.
they released binaries for win/nix on their site, i believe, and to github.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @02:20AM
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @02:30AM
Tell us more about your wild sex life involving four-year-olds, lollipops, and charging cables.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @04:26AM
If you want to be spied on, just say "hey google." Actually, it's already listening to you by the time you said that. Google is spying on you almost as much as MS with W10.
I mean, why does wallpaper need access to your location data? Or a card game need to see your entire contact list? Ever since I got an Android phone, I've been waiting to root it and install something like Cyanogenmod - though I don't know if I can trust that yet. I'm waiting for a stable version to be available.
My response to W10 is to install Linux on my laptop.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @09:23AM
Ever since I got an Android phone, I've been waiting to root it and install something like Cyanogenmod
Suggesting http://replicant.us/ [replicant.us] (cyanogen's full of binary blobs and partly owned by Micro$oft)
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday August 05 2015, @12:09AM
It IS Google's fault. They control the Android trademark. They should set requirements for handset makers to be able to use that trademark and call their phone an "Android phone", and one of those requirements should be that they do updates, esp. security updates, for as long as people have the phone.
Google hasn't done a damn thing to try to pressure the handset makers into fixing this problem. Since "Android" is part of "Google", I blame Google just as much as I do the handset makers.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Hairyfeet on Monday August 03 2015, @02:44AM
LOL Shellshock and Heartbleed don't ring any bells? News Flash Linux has just as many bugs as any other OS in fact last year Linux and OSX had more vulnerabilities than Windows [betanews.com] by a pretty decent margin, you simply do not hear of them because the MSM really doesn't see an OS with a 1% userbase as newsworthy. Sorry but that is just how it is, just look at how many stories we've had on Windows 10 compared to the latest release of ubuntu.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @02:53AM
Fight the fight Hairy. Every time you make that vulnerability argument and provide that link, you get your ass handed to you showing you how unbelievably misleading those stats are (for those too lazy to look up one of his older "arguments", suffice it to say that to do an apples-to-apples comparison using his numbers, all the non-Windows numbers are double, triple, quadruple-counted; to do it fair, you'd have to sum up the total Windows vulnerabilities by counting them all for Win7 Basic, Win7 Home, Win7 Pro, Win7 Ultimate, etc.).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @02:53AM
^Must be a MS employee.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @09:28AM
What an absolutely ridiculous claim to make. How can you compare three numbers when two of them are corporate secrets? Also, Linux is a kernel, not an operating system...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @02:54AM
http://grandstreamdreams.blogspot.com/2015/07/rook-security-milano-tool.html [blogspot.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @11:08PM
got milano ... over 20 hours later it is s.l.o.w.l.y. picking its way through places in *nix we were taught to stay the heck out of - precisely the areas where the devious smirkheads would plant their sh!tewarez. picked up detekt for the wife's legacy machine. fight back we must, lose we cannot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @04:21AM
Sounds just like Ubuntu to me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @05:32AM
I quit Ubuntu when their desktop had a bar/dock appear/disappear on the left hand side of the screen and I heard about the deal with Amazon. Fuck that. (I also avoid any other distro which pulls/bases packages from Ubuntu's repos.
I quit SUSE during the whole Novell/Microsoft love-in. Fuck that. (I also avoid openSUSE, once bitten...) (oh yeah and fuck mono and the useless moonlight plugin while we're at it)
A minimal Debian install works for me.
(Score: 1) by seeprime on Monday August 03 2015, @04:45AM
If it works, it's not useless.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Tuesday August 04 2015, @02:47AM
I was just thinking earlier today that using Windows 10 could be a crime if you have a nondisclosure agreement involving any files / data you put on it. If your company handles government contracts for secret projects, it could be a federal crime or even treason. It's like emailing all your sensitive documents to random strangers. Even if we decide Microsoft is trustworthy (hah!) and they only take metadata, an eavesdropper on the traffic could narrow down which machines are handling the data for a secret project they're interested in, allowing them to focus their hacking and phishing efforts. If they can narrow it down to a specific machine and the data is valuable enough a targeted physical attack isn't out of the question.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek