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maxwell demon [soylentnews.org] writes:

Remember the Bundestrojaner (Federal Trojan)? Well, if you thought that was a thing of the past, here's news for you: A new version of it has just been approved by the German government for use by the German police. From the article at softpedia: [softpedia.com]

The German government has approved that a new version of the infamous Bundestrojaner (Federal Trojan) malware be used against real-life targets, after authorities have been working on an updated version for the past months.

Bundestrojaner stands for "Federal Trojan," when translated from German. It is one of the first malware families ever created by a government and then deployed against its own citizens.

The site helpnetsecurity.com has more information: [helpnetsecurity.com]

The malware has been developed in-house, and has been available since autumn 2015. It is supposed to be used only for so-called telecommunication surveillance at the source, i.e. to read emails, chats and wiretap phone calls made by the target via his or her computer or smartphone, and not to access files, steal passwords, or set up video or audio surveillance via the device.

It’s seems, though, that it is capable of doing all of that.

If you understand German, you also can go to the original Deutschlandfunk article cites by both as source. [deutschlandfunk.de] There's also an (obviously also German language) audio link [dradio.de] on that page (non-obviously placed in the lower right corner of the big image near the beginning of the article). The spoken text in that audio file is not identical to the written text on the page, but seems to contain the same information.

Side remark: Unlike claimed by softpedia.com, Deutschlandfunk [wikipedia.org] is not a newspaper, but a broadcasting radio station.

Original Submission