Monday, June 17, 2013

The Carnivore Program and NarusInsight Software

 I realized after reading what I wrote that it was in some ways both inaccurate and incomplete when I compared it to the facts at Wikipedia. So, I felt it might be useful for you to know about 2 computer programs that I know of that are used to monitor electronic communications likely worldwide. So, I felt your reading these facts from Wikipedia would be more useful than my layman's knowledge about this subject. I deleted what I wrote and will let the facts stand for themselves.

Carnivore (software) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnivore_(software)‎
Carnivore was a system implemented by the Federal Bureau of Investigation that was designed to monitor email and electronic communications. It used a ...
‎Configuration - ‎Placement - ‎Controversy - ‎See also

Carnivore (software)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Carnivore was a system implemented by the Federal Bureau of Investigation that was designed to monitor email and electronic communications. It used a customizable packet sniffer that can monitor all of a target user's Internet traffic. Carnivore was implemented in October 1997. By 2005 it had been replaced with improved commercial software such as NarusInsight.[1]

Contents

Configuration

The Carnivore system was a Microsoft Windows-based workstation with packet-sniffing software and a removable disk drive.[2] This computer must be physically installed at an Internet service provider (ISP) or other location where it can "sniff" traffic on a LAN segment to look for email messages in transit. The technology itself was not highly advanced — it used a standard packet sniffer and straightforward filtering. The critical components of the operation were the filtering criteria. To accurately match the appropriate subject, an elaborate content model was developed.[3]

Controversy

Several groups expressed concern regarding the implementation, usage, and possible abuses of Carnivore. In July 2000, the Electronic Frontier Foundation submitted a statement to the Subcommittee on the Constitution of the Committee on the Judiciary United States House of Representatives detailing the dangers of such a system.[4] The Electronic Privacy Information Center also made several releases dealing with it.[5]
The FBI countered these concerns with statements highlighting the target-able nature of Carnivore. Assistant FBI Director Donald Kerr was quoted as saying:
The Carnivore device works much like commercial "sniffers" and other network diagnostic tools used by ISPs every day, except that it provides the FBI with a unique ability to distinguish between communications which may be lawfully intercepted and those which may not. For example, if a court order provides for the lawful interception of one type of communication (e.g., e-mail), but excludes all other communications (e.g., online shopping) the Carnivore tool can be configured to intercept only those e-mails being transmitted either to or from the named subject. ... [it] is a very specialized network analyzer or "sniffer" which runs as an application program on a normal personal computer under the Microsoft Windows operating system. It works by "sniffing" the proper portions of network packets and copying and storing only those packets which match a finely defined filter set programmed in conformity with the court order. This filter set can be extremely complex, and this provides the FBI with an ability to collect transmissions which comply with pen register court orders, trap & trace court orders, Title III interception orders, etc.... ...It is important to distinguish now what is meant by "sniffing." The problem of discriminating between users' messages on the Internet is a complex one. However, this is exactly what Carnivore does. It does NOT search through the contents of every message and collect those that contain certain key words like "bomb" or "drugs." It selects messages based on criteria expressly set out in the court order, for example, messages transmitted to or from a particular account or to or from a particular user.[6]
After prolonged negative coverage in the press, the FBI changed the name of its system from "Carnivore" to the more benign-sounding "DCS1000." DCS is reported to stand for "Digital Collection System"; the system has the same functions as before. The Associated Press reported in mid-January 2005 that the FBI essentially abandoned the use of Carnivore in 2001, in favor of commercially available software, such as NarusInsight (a mass surveillance system).[7]

See also

References

  1. ^ "FBI Ditches Carnivore Surveillance System". Foxnews.com. Associated Press. 2005-01-18. Retrieved 2008-10-29.
  2. ^ "How Carnivore Email Surveillance Worked". about.com. Retrieved 2008-10-29.
  3. ^ Kevin Poulsen (October 04, 2000). "Carnivore Details Emerge". SecurityFocus.
  4. ^ http://www.eff.org/Privacy/Surveillance/Carnivore[dead link]
  5. ^ Electronic Privacy Information Center: Carnivore FOIA Documents
  6. ^ Richard F. Forno (May 2005). "Who's Afraid of Carnivore? Not Me". cryptome.org.
  7. ^ "FBI Ditches Carnivore Surveillance System". Foxnews.com. Associated Press. 2005-01-18. Retrieved 2008-10-29.

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  end quote from Wikipedia under the heading "Carnivore Software"
It has been replaced mostly with more sophisticated software now including:
 

Narus (company)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  (Redirected from NarusInsight)
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Narus
Type Subsidiary of Boeing
Industry Telecommunication
Founded 1997
Headquarters Sunnyvale, California, United States
Key people Ori Cohen (Co-founder)
Products Monitoring/surveillance systems
Parent Boeing
Website www.narus.com
Narus is a company, now a wholly owned subsidiary of Boeing, which provides real-time network traffic and analytics software with enterprise class spyware capabilities.[1][2] It was co-founded in Israel in 1997 by Ori Cohen, who had served as Vice President of Business and Technology Development for VDONet, an early media streaming pioneer, and Stas Khirman.[3]
Narus is notable for being the creator of NarusInsight, a supercomputer system whose installation in AT&T's San Francisco Internet backbone gave rise to a 2006 class action lawsuit by the Electronic Frontier Foundation against AT&T, Hepting v. AT&T.[4]

Contents

Management and investors

Narus was founded in 1997 by a team of Israelis led by Ori Cohen and Stas Khirman.[5] It became a wholly owned subsidiary of Boeing in 2010.[6][7] According to the Narus website, Cohen and Khirman are not members of the Board.[8]
Prior to 9/11 Narus worked on building carrier-grade tools to analyze IP network traffic for billing purposes, to prevent what they term "revenue leakage". Post-9/11 they have continued down that path while adding more semantic monitoring abilities for surveillance purposes.
In 2004, Narus engaged the former Deputy Director of the National Security Agency, William Crowell as a director. From the Press Release announcing this:[9]
"Crowell is an independent security consultant and holds several board positions with a variety of technology and technology-based security companies. Since 9/11, Crowell has served on the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Task Force on Terrorism and Deterrence, the National Research Council Committee on Science and Technology for Countering Terrorism and the Markle Foundation Task Force on National Security in the Information Age."
Narus has venture funding from companies including JP Morgan Partners, Mayfield, NeoCarta, Presidio Venture Partners, Walden International, Intel, NTT Software and Sumisho Electronics.
Narus has several business partners who provide various technologies similar to the features of NarusInsight. Several of the partners are funded by In-Q-Tel.

NarusInsight

System specification and capabilities

Some features of NarusInsight include:[10]
  • Scalability to support surveillance of large, complex IP networks (such as the Internet).
  • High-speed packet processing performance, which enables it to sift through the vast quantities of information that travel over the Internet.
  • Normalization, Correlation, Aggregation and Analysis provide a model of user, element, protocol, application and network behaviors, in real-time. That is it can track individual users, monitor which applications they are using (e.g., web browsers, instant messaging applications, e-mail) and what they are doing with those applications (e.g., which web sites they have visited, what they have written in their emails/IM conversations), and see how users' activities are connected to each other (e.g., compiling lists of people who visit a certain type of web site or use certain words or phrases in their e-mail messages.
  • High reliability from data collection to data processing and analysis.
  • NarusInsight's functionality can be configured to feed a particular activity or IP service such as security lawful intercept or even Skype detection and blocking.
  • Compliance with CALEA and ETSI.
  • Certified by Telecommunication Engineering Center (TEC) in India for lawful intercept and monitoring systems for ISPs.
The intercepted data flows into NarusInsight Intercept Suite. This data is stored and analyzed for surveillance and forensic analysis purposes.
Other capabilities include playback of streaming media (i.e., VoIP), rendering of web pages, examination of e-mail and the ability to analyze the payload/attachments of e-mail or file transfer protocols. Narus partner products, such as Pen-Link, offer the ability to quickly analyze information collected by the Directed Analysis or Lawful Intercept modules.
A single NarusInsight machine can monitor traffic equal to the maximum capacity (10 Gbit/s) of around 39,000 256k DSL lines or 195,000 56k telephone modems. But, in practical terms, since individual internet connections are not continually filled to capacity, the 10 Gbit/s capacity of one NarusInsight installation enables it to monitor the combined traffic of several million broadband users.
According to a year 2007 company press release, the latest version of NarusInsight Intercept Suite (NIS) is "the industry's only network traffic intelligence system that supports real-time precision targeting, capturing and reconstruction of webmail traffic... including Google Gmail, MSN Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail".[11] However, currently most webmail traffic can be HTTPS encrypted, so the content of messages can only be monitored with the consent of service providers.
It can also perform semantic analysis of the same traffic as it is happening, in other words analyze the content, meaning, structure and significance of traffic in real time. The exact use of this data is not fully documented, as the public is not authorized to see what types of activities and ideas are being monitored.

See also

References

  1. ^ "Boeing: Narus". Boeing. Retrieved 17 September 2011. "A wholly owned subsidiary of The Boeing Company, Narus is headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif., and supports a global base of government and commercial customers."
  2. ^ "Narus Networks Private Limited: Private Company Information". Bloomberg Businessweek. Retrieved 17 September 2011. "Narus Networks Private Limited provides real-time network traffic and analytics software used to protect against cyber attacks and persistent threats aimed at large Internet Protocol networks."
  3. ^ "Ori Cohen: Executive Profile & Biography". Bloomberg Businessweek. Retrieved 17 September 2011. "He served as Vice President of Business and Technology Development for VDOnet and Chief Executive Officer for IntelliCom Ltd."
  4. ^ EFF vs AT&T
  5. ^ Fogel, Raphael (11 July 2006). "Ori Cohen, private eye". Haaretz. Retrieved 17 September 2011. "It was founded in 1997 by Dr Ori Cohen, Stas Khirman and four other guys in Israel."
  6. ^ "Boeing buying cybersecurity firm Narus". Bloomberg Businessweek (St. Louis). Associated Press. 8 July 2010. Retrieved 18 September 2011. "Boeing announced its second acquisition in as many weeks, saying it will buy anti-cyber attack software company Narus."
  7. ^ "Boeing Completes Acquisition of Narus". Benzinga.com. 29 July 2010. Retrieved 18 September 2011. "Boeing (NYSE: BA) today announced it has completed its acquisition of Narus."
  8. ^ "Executive Team". Narus. Retrieved 25 February 2013.
  9. ^ Narus Appoints Former Deputy Director of the National Security Agency To Its Board of Directors
  10. ^ Key Features list of NarusInsight
  11. ^ "Narus Expands Traffic Intelligence Solution to Webmail Targeting". Reuters. 2007-12-10. Retrieved 2008-02-13.

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end quote from:
NarusInsight.[1]

So, when the government says they are not listeing to your conversations they are right, no people are listening to your conversations if you are a law abiding citizen. However, computer programs are 24 hours a day since the 1990s using this type of advanced software that can literally monitor to every media communication on earth and every email and text and internet site as well as every keystroke on your computer anywhere in the world. 


Also, if you are interested in "drilling down" at wikipedia and other sites as well as references and reference word buttons at these sites likely you could "Drill down as far as you want to go"  regarding understanding more about U.S. and surveillance of literally all media on earth by the U.S. and all other nations. 
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