Lawyer finds surveillance software in hard drive supplied by police

[securitybreach]

Lawyer representing whistle blowers finds malware on drive supplied by cops

 

An Arkansas lawyer representing current and former police officers in a contentious whistle-blower lawsuit is crying foul after finding three distinct pieces of malware on an external hard drive supplied by police department officials.

 

The hard drive was provided last year by the Fort Smith Police Department to North Little Rock attorney Matt Campbell in response to a discovery demand filed in the case. Campbell is representing three current or former police officers in a court action, which was filed under Arkansas' Whistle-Blower Act. The lawsuit alleges former Fort Smith police officer Don Paul Bales and two other plaintiffs were illegally investigated after reporting wrongful termination and overtime pay practices in the department.

 

According to court documents filed last week in the case, Campbell provided police officials with an external hard drive for them to load with e-mail and other data responding to his discovery request. When he got it back, he found something he didn't request. In a subfolder titled D:\Bales Court Order, a computer security consultant for Campbell allegedly found three well-known trojans, including:

• Win32:Zbot-AVH[Trj], a password logger and backdoor
  
• NSIS:Downloader-CC[Trj], a program that connects to attacker-controlled servers and downloads and installs additional programs, and
  
• Two instances of Win32Cycbot-NF[Trj], a backdoor
  

All three trojans are usually easily detected by antivirus software. In an affidavit filed in the whistle-blower case, Campbell's security consultant said it's unlikely the files were copied to the hard drive by accident, given claims by Fort Smith police that department systems ran real-time AV protection.........

 

 

http://arstechnica.c...pplied-by-cops/

[atiustira]

I sure would like to know the IP address of where that thing was trying to connect to.

Edited April 15, 2015 by atiustira

[Guest LilBambi]

Paint me surprised....sigh...

[securitybreach]

Paint me surprised....sigh...

 

Agreed

[ebrke]

I've been waiting for the police to claim that the malware was on the HDD when it was given to them, but so far I haven't heard that claim made.

[abarbarian]

http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/security/81939.html

 

 

Five police departments in Maine, whose networks are linked together so they can share files, recently deposited bitcoins worth 300 euros into a Swiss bank account as ransom for their records. The departments' management system was locked down by Megacode ransomware, which scrambled their data and rendered it unusable.

The police decided to pay up after their experts failed to crack the ransomware code, said Sheriff Todd Bracket of Lincoln County.

 

It is very possible that the police were incompetent enough to infect the hdd mentioned in the thread themselves going by the above article which clearly shows how uneducated they are in IT matters.

[securitybreach]

Yup, poor security and no training. Morons