German federal law allows for wiretaps of citizens in certain extreme cases. However, given that some internet calling programs like Skype allow for encrypted conversations, authorities sought to find alternative ways to monitor the conversation on the client end (on the wiretapped user's computer, where the decrypted conversation is revealed). The approach was controversial, but in 2008 a German court approved the trojan for narrow use in wiretapping.
The only remaining mystery was that no one had found the program in question in the wild or try to decompile/analyze its code. Thus its exact implementation and capabilities remained a mystery.
The CCC may have cracked that mystery, obtaining what they claim is a copy of the Bundestrojan. The malware contains a DLL and a kernel driver, with which to accomplish its nefarious operations.
German government caught using invasive Trojan?
Posted on Tuesday, October 11 2011 @ 21:00 CEST by Thomas De MaesschalckDailyTech reports about the Bundestrojan, a Trojan horse from the German government that is causing some controversy because its capabilities go well beyond what it's legally authorized to do by German federal courts. Full details over here.
