Police set to step up hacking of home PCs
Found on Times Online on Sunday, 04 January 2009
The Home Office has quietly adopted a new plan to allow police across Britain routinely to hack into people's personal computers without a warrant.
The strategy will allow French, German and other EU forces to ask British officers to hack into someone's UK computer and pass over any material gleaned.
Police might also send an e-mail to a suspect's computer. The message would include an attachment that contained a virus or "malware". If the attachment was opened, the remote search facility would be covertly activated. Alternatively, police could park outside a suspect's home and hack into his or her hard drive using the wireless network.
Setting aside that this is a drastic violation of personal freedom and privacy, it won't really help much and just adds more surveillance to the Orwellian nation. Bot-herders and the VX scene have been using the attachment trick for so long enough that everybody should realize the dangers of opening every attachments (I wonder how they plan to infiltrate Linux desktops). Also, secure your wireless network if you really need it. Most people use wireless (because it's oh so cool) when a piece of CAT5 cable would do the same (in fact it does better); and a cable is a tad harder to sniff.