12.26.15
EPO Whistleblowing: How (Not) to Use Machines at the Office
Summary: What Control Risks and the EPO’s management probably hope staff won’t know and therefore, potentially, self-incriminate
STAFF of the EPO, as we noted here a few days ago, no longer trusts phones at the Office, but what about the PCs and the printers? Thankfully, having inquired for a while, we have been able to gather some information and now is a good time to share it, for the safety of EPO workers who are under the vigilant eyes of Team Battistelli and unaccountable goons like Control Risks.
“Anyone who uses an EPO computer to do anything at all is in danger,” one reader told us.
“It is thus imperative that any file which is published isn’t 100% identical to the original, even if it was widely distributed internally in the first place.”
–Anonymous“It is pretty much established that ALL user computers at the EPO are equipped with key logging software,” said an anonymous person. This is apparently well understood by now. No wonder the atmosphere at work is so depressing. There have been studies conducted which explain the effect of never having any privacy, let alone a sense of privacy.
“I obviously couldn’t study the currently installed machines myself,” one reader told us, “but I trust my sources on this. The amount of data transmitted and stored is trivial, and putting myself in the skin of a spy, I would suppose that the logging includes the list of opened windows with the ID of the one in focus, with occasional screen captures. That’s fairly easy to implement.”
As some people put it, Windows is almost designed and even optimised for spying. There are many surveillance add-ons sold for it, and Vista 10 is spyware out of the box (for Microsoft to spy on every keypress and much more).
“There are commercial programs offered on the market that monitor and log any data traffic to and from attached USB ports.”
–Anonymous“Using hooks in the file system,” a reader of ours hypothesised, “you could also check whether someone uploads a file in Chrome or Firefox for transmission, e.g. in a webmail window, so you don’t even need to doctor and compromise the browsers.
“It would also be easy to scan EPO computers for an identical copy of any file which shows up on the Internet. Someone who would want to leak a document would have to store it on his/her local drive first, and that leaves traces. This wouldn’t require excessive resources if you work with file signatures computed hash functions.
“It is thus imperative that any file which is published isn’t 100% identical to the original, even if it was widely distributed internally in the first place.”
Obviously it would be unwise to use a computer at work for subversive activities in the first place. It’s safer to do so from home or some open network.
“I often work with bitmap conversions,” a person once advised us, “which strips all original metadata and of any stuff which could be easily hidden in PDFs. The Adobe format is ugly and complex, and provides PLENTY of opportunities for introducing side channels, e.g. orphan objects, extra entries in character coding vectors, or even the ordering of objects within a page, which PDF linearization wouldn’t defeat. Technically, you could still watermark a document using character kerning, which is harder to defeat with bitmap transformation, but this would require an infrastructure just for that, and that would require RATHER smart operators.”
“One can only send a document to one’s own e-mail address these days.”
–AnonymousGoing back to the point about Windows, especially recent versions of it, it’s probably not wise to use it because spying is often done by numerous parties (including Microsoft) at the same time. Personal data is later being passed around or even sold.
One reader reminds us: “There are commercial programs offered on the market that monitor and log any data traffic to and from attached USB ports. It would be slightly safer to obfuscate a file before saving it to an USB stick, but there are still traces. I know of places who use these, but I don’t know if the EPO is among them. By the way, our beloved NSA files patents for “butt plugs” for insertion into USB ports.”
Just to complete the picture, someone told us that if people use the machines at the Office, then “Xerox” may appear in the document producer metadata and “chances are,” in such a case, “that the document was scanned on these high performance network printers which are widely used at the EPO. These used to be in open access, but current models require the user to present his ID badge in order to access the scan menu. One can only send a document to one’s own e-mail address these days.”
Our sources believe that computer keyboards are equipped with smart card readers, but we don’t know whether the smart card must be left inserted in order to work. In any case, the screen lock delay is quite short, so one can hardly use the excuse “someone must have entered my office when I went out to take a leak”.
Any public file produced by the Register or Espacenet is generated on the fly from internal bitmap images and contains metadata which could betray the IP of the requester, so sources would want to cleanse these too.
At Techrights we use various methods to eliminate or at least significantly reduce the risk of sources being found through metadata. Nevertheless, if during transmission there is identifying information and if Control Risks can observe the session, then there is risk of useful interception. We previously provided information on how to securely send data to us. Some of the above observations hopefully increase awareness of the traps and the weaknesses that are EPO-specific. █
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