This is a bit past its sell-by date, but Crypto-gram recently carried information of a story in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (German article) about a supposed plan by the “Special Tasks Service” (DBA) of the Swiss communications ministry (Uvek) to requre Swiss ISPs to assist in infecting Voice-over-IP endpoint PCs with trojans that would enable interception of VoIP communications, such as Skype, Vonage or other protocols.
According to the NZZ, the Swiss company ERA IT Solutions is behind the trojan’s development, although no technical information is given. I especially love the claim that “it’s designed to be undetectable by firewalls or virus scanners.” Or Macs, or tripwire on Solaris, but maybe they can have a chat with Joanna Rudkowska about how to do it. Regardless, F-Secure probably won’t cooperate, and seemed to take a dim view of this toy’s chances of success.
The DBA, created as the Uvek’s “dirty tricks and espionage” department, lists wiretapping among its core tasks. According to Swiss telco law, when to deploy such toys is still within the purview of the local authorities, although data protection and warrant mechanisms are not mentioned. The trojan may apparently be either surreptiously installed by the police, or through ISPs. Under the threat of coercion, I assume.
More information is at PC Pro. I honestly can’t imagine what the hell ERA’s marketing directory was thinking; if I were him, I’d be doing PR damage control like mad now. Needless to say, Keystone Kop trojans don’t seem to be listed on their products page.
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