Federal wiretaps can be abused by ISP insiders
The built-in mechanism that lets many Internet providers tap communications for law enforcement agencies is susceptible to abuse by insiders who work for the ISPs, Black Hat 2010 was told.
The result could be eavesdropping on communications by parties who don't have court approval to do so, says Tom Cross, the research director for IBM's X-Force Research.
Cisco routers that use inside provider networks have a weakness in that they don't generate traps when bad passwords are used over and over as would be the case if someone were trying to brute-force the password. That leaves the machines open to the attacks and gives network administrators no warning. In addition, logs that would record when the routers gather traffic for a tap can be shut off so there is no audit trail, leaving no record of the tap being placed, Cross says.
