Law enforcement technologyGerman police uses backdoor Trojan to monitor Skype calls

Published 12 October 2011

A backdoor Trojan capable of monitoring online activity and recording Skype calls has been detected — and is allegedly being used by the German police force

A backdoor Trojan capable of monitoring online activity and recording Skype calls has been detected — and is allegedly being used by the German police force.

ZDnet reports that according to research by the Chaos Computer Club (CCC), the malware can siphon away intimate data, and also offers a remote control or backdoor functionality for uploading and executing arbitrary programs. It said functionality in the “Bundestrojaner light” (“federal Trojan”), concealed as “Quellen-TKÜ,” goes much further than to just observe and intercept internet based telecommunication, and thus violates the terms set by the constitutional court.

German courts have permitted police to use Bundestrojaner to record Skype conversations if there is legal permission for a wiretap.

The report said: “The Trojan can, for example, receive uploads of arbitrary programs from the internet and execute them remotely. This means an upgrade path from Quellen-TKÜ to the full Bundestrojaner’s functionality is built in right from the start.

“The analysis concludes that the Trojan’s developers never even tried to put in technical safeguards in to make sure the malware can exclusively be used for wiretapping internet telephony, as set forth by the constitution court. On the contrary, the design included functionality to clandestinely add more components over the network right from the start, making it a bridge-head to further infiltrate the computer.”