Will security firms detect police spyware?

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Sophos says "It's crazy not to detect police spyware"

Malicious code is malicious code. There's no reason why organisations targeted by "police spyware" could not write a variant of the e-bug for their own use. Before we know it, we'll all be spied on by every Tom, Dick and Harry - the authorities could even become a victim of their own code!

If a customer suspects they may be under surveillance and sends a spyware Trojan horse to us here at Sophos, we're going to provide protection against it.

We have no way of knowing if it was written by the authorities and, even if we did, we wouldn't know whether it was being used by the authorities or if it had been commandeered by a third party wishing to spy on our customer - it's a totally unworkable situation.

And what happens if Country X asks us not to detect spyware they have written to spy on Country Y? Everything is fine until Y asks us for detection of X's spyware. Who do we decide to listen to? We're a multinational company with customers around the world (including many at government and military level) so we can't pick and choose. So, it makes sense to detect everything.

Sophos would like to reassure customers that it has not been asked to turn off detection of any viruses, worms or Trojan horses by any intelligence agency around the world and continues to believe that detection of all such malware is important to our users.

It would be crazy for us not to detect "police spyware".

Regards
Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant, Sophos

Posted by: gcluley   Posted on: 07/17/07 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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