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ArsTechnica reports that Matt Campbell, a North Little Rock attorney who represents police department whistleblowers supplied an external hard drive to the Fort Smith Police Department for them to copy emails and other evidence. When it was returned, he discovered that it contained three well-known trojan viruses:
According to court documents filed last week in the case, Campbell provided police officials with an external hard drive for them to load with e-mail and other data responding to his discovery request. When he got it back, he found something he didn't request. In a subfolder titled D:\Bales Court Order, a computer security consultant for Campbell allegedly found three well-known trojans, including:
- Win32:Zbot-AVH[Trj], a password logger and backdoor
- NSIS:Downloader-CC[Trj], a program that connects to attacker-controlled servers and downloads and installs additional programs, and
- Two instances of Win32Cycbot-NF[Trj], a backdoor
All three trojans are usually easily detected by antivirus software. In an affidavit filed in the whistle-blower case, Campbell's security consultant said it's unlikely the files were copied to the hard drive by accident, given claims by Fort Smith police that department systems ran real-time AV protection.
"Additionally, the placement of these trojans, all in the same sub-folder and not in the root directory, means that [t]he trojans were not already on the external hard drive that was sent to Mr. Campbell, and were more likely placed in that folder intentionally with the goal of taking command of Mr. Campbell's computer while also stealing passwords to his accounts."
Will the Fort Smith Police Department be held accountable? Place your bets...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by lentilla on Wednesday April 15 2015, @07:32PM
I would expect that many police departments have special software just for that, probably named with scary words like "Remote Assistance and Penetration Evidence". Somebody will have marketed this software to the department implying that the most difficult thing about the software is keeping the donut crumbs off the keyboard whilst installing leet hacks.
In many ways, this special software is a bit like spam. Spammers don't care how effective their product is, only that they made a sale. It's the ultimate bromide for department heads - they've been sold a dream.
Mind you, never under-estimate how often a simple hack like this might work...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 16 2015, @12:43PM
Somebody will have marketed this software to the department implying that the most difficult thing about the software is keeping the donut crumbs off the keyboard whilst installing leet hacks.
Who? We don't even have evidence that it is anything other than a dumb accident in the first place. Now, the accusation has morphed to a product marketed to the police department.