How does the program Carnivore and/or Magic Lantern work?And what exactly do they do?

They sift through shitloads of information and sort it into a big old profile on particular individuals(in some intances), IP addresses, MAC addresses, and email addresses. Don't be paranoid about it, theres just so much volume to deal with. If you're REALLY paranoid, get a laptop, buy a wifi card with cash, and never use one of your older accounts with that. And if its an open firmware laptop, disable using the machines open firmware MAC address and start using the wifi cards MAC address. paranoia usually isn't justified until you get arrested, bro.
peace, ytinu

no one really knows how they work. However, the feds claim they only have the ability to read email "header" information. For all i know, they might be remote administration tools, which enable the feds full access to any server they have carnivore installed on.

i think thats just plain bullshit considering carniviour supposedly sniffs all traffic to and from that user. why would they only be able to read headers? nothing you send is safe, not even from a wifi laptop with leached bandwidth. if they want you bad enough they will just use physical survailence on you when you go to use the laptop.

with wifi and an exclusively wifi MAC address its harder to trace you to a physical location. Dealing with surveillance is your own problem. Encryption is another alternative; its not that hard to set encryption on Linksys and Airport (1 and 2) wifi routers for yourself or for everyone if that matters to you. Alternately, you can use ssh for everything. I guess the question is how sensitive the information you're dealing with is. I wouldn't be concerned about carnivore or magic lantern or anything unless you have a strong reason to believe you're being monitored.

magic lantern is a trojan, carnivore is an traffic sniffer.

Or so the feds claim. Have you ever seen the carnivore source? Have you ever even seen the carnivore files itself? if so, damn you are one lucky bastard.

carnivore cannot specifically target users. that is why it is considered such a threat. it collects all data going through the isp that it is hardwired to. im not sure what 'wifi' is, but if your going to browse with an ISP that has it connected, then no amount of hardware is going to save you. the only thing you can do is encrypt everything that passes through. the sheer amount of data colected makes it all but useless.

magic latern is a keylogger, that records all strokes you make on your keyboard and sends it back to whoever. there are many diffrent keyloggers out there, but this is one that the FBI was considering useing (not sure if they went through with it though).

i might be confusing echelon with carnivore, but there basically the same thing. i think echelon is keyword based, hence 'spam echelon day'.

i found a very inforative site
http://www.howstuffworks.com/carnivore.htm

quote:

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Originally posted by RAOVQ:
carnivore cannot specifically target
i might be confusing echelon with carnivore, but there basically the same thing. i think echelon is keyword based, hence 'spam echelon day'.

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is there actually a spam echelon day and if so when is it?
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lae

sometime in october, everyone sends out emails with lots and lots of trigger words in it. like MI5, KGB, CIA, FBI etc etc. i had one that was about 5 pages long.

Maybe these will be helpful to anyone really interested in the whole Carnivore bugaboo...

Then again... anyone who is really interested in Carnivore, with the motivation to search for the info, has probably already read this stuff.....

So..... for the lazy ones then ---

http://www.house.gov/judiciary/con07241.htm --- A bunch of testimonies regarding Carnivore given before a House Congressional Committee (Committee on the Judiciary).

http://www.usdoj.gov/jmd/publications/carniv_entry.htm --- Draft copy of a technical review of the Carnivore System. A link to the .PDF is provided.

http://www.cdt.org/security/carnivore/001203comments.html --- Critique on the Carnivore System Technical Review (The review draft copy).

http://www.cdt.org/security/carnivore/001214carniv_final.pdf --- Final copy of the Carnivore System Technical Review. Right click for the .PDF (about 9 Mb)


It's a lot of reading, but good stuff nonetheless!

I found i picture in that final pdf file that
d1ng0 linked to. it pretty well shows the settings/gui of carnivore. interesting. looks just like a regular packet sniffer. just better.

http://www.angelfire.com/punk4/speng/carnivore.JPG

here is another picture (again, from the .pdf) that shows how they setup the carnivore system.
http://www.angelfire.com/punk4/speng/carnivore2.JPG

It says that they do it through a one way tap, so that the carnivore computer cannot send any TCP/IP packets, just receive them.

hope this was interesting

no, as they�re fake ...

"........no, as they�re fake ........"

Which, the report or the "screenshots"?
Personally, I don't believe the pictures are accurate either, but I do trust the reports.

There are a plethora of sites out there that deal with the constitutionality and legality of Carnivores' use, so I'm not too worried about the system as a whole. Anything gathered outside the stricture of the court order is simply inadmissable. They may end up getting the dirt on you (the best reason for using solid encryption) through misuse of the system, but then they would have to find another (more legally binding) way to take you down.

Remember that Carnivore can only collect the data that goes through specific filter settings. It takes two other programs to actually analyze the stuff (three or more if they actually think you're important enough to try and break your encryption). So be a good boy and no probs....

Of Course, I have no idea how any of all the recent 'anti-terrorism' bill passing nonsense may have affected Carnivore's use, so that's something to think about....

I'd be more worried about the Federal governments misuse of CALEA and rampant exploitataion of TEMPEST Technology than I ever could muster for Carnivore.....