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German bill provides network traffic redirection to install state trojans

Submitted by Rianne Schestowitz on Tuesday 14th of July 2020 06:58:31 AM Filed under
GNU
Linux
Security

Preliminary note: This post primarily affects users falling under German jurisdiction, but may apply to other countries as well, where similar laws are already in place or about to be introduced. Unfortunately, some primary sources are German only.

According to current status and local knowledge, the German government is about to establish a law that provides the redirection of network traffic through a intelligence agencies' infrastructure in order to exploit security vulnerabilities and, for example, to install a certain type of malware known as Staatstrojaner (state trojans).

The bill lists both end-user devices and servers as potential targets, and requires "telecommunication service providers" to establish and maintain infrastructure for transparently redirecting traffic of certain users, households, or IP addresses. "Telecommunication service providers" covers any company providing telecommunication services, thus ranging from cable, DSL or fiber providers to mail, VoIP and messaging vendors. Ultimately, even backbone providers or internet exchanges are covered by this definition.

[...]

The state trojan was meant to be the ultima ratio when it was introduced in 2009. It could only be used by the Federal Criminal Police Office (Bundeskriminalamt) in case of international terrorism and preventing terrorist attacks.

Once such laws were introduced, governments usually get a taste for it. As of today, any police authority may use it even in cases of less severe crimes than terrorism such as counterfeiting money or violations against the Narcotics Act (Betäubungsmittelgesetz, e. g. drug consumption or trafficking).

As you can see, compromising devices became increasingly common as a measure at law enforcement agencies. It is probably going to be extended to intelligence agencies within a short amount of time. For obvious historical reasons, the German state only gives certain rights to police and intelligence agencies to avoid too much power being concentrated in one organisation, which could turn it against their people.

[...]

At IPFire, we fight to protect your network. Frankly, this was complicated enough before governments legalised hacking by intelligence agencies. This German bill will not make anything more secure. Instead, it will turn defense against security vulnerabilities even more into an arms race.

This is not an example of "the opposite of good is good intentions". This is beyond dangerous.

Imagine, for example, cyber criminals or foreign intelligence agencies (ab)using that redirection infrastructure in order to deploy their malware. Perhaps they will be able to take advantage of some zero day exploits left on some servers in that infrastructure as well (the CIA suffered from a similar breach in 2017). With a blink of an eye, arbitrary malware could be placed on a significant amount of computers compromised that way. Ransomware attacks such as WannaCry or NonPetya come to mind...

Imagine compromised machines being vulnerable to other attacks as well, as some security measures have been turned off. Image surveillance abuse. Imagine future governments abusing this feature for persecution of unwanted people or political opponents - with a view at current political events, one may be concerned about personal liberties being restricted.

[...]

We will start next week by providing advice on whom to trust and how to establish a security-focussed mindset. Afterwards, we focus on specific technical aspects and advise how to configure IPFire machines as secure as possible - as it already implements effective mitigations against those attacks.

Read more

»

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