Magic Lantern software
Magic Lantern, a
keystroke logging program, is one of several enhancements to
Carnivore discovered by the public in mid-November,
2001. In response to a
Freedom of Information Act request filed in
2000 by the
Electronic Privacy Information Center, the FBI released a series of unclassified documents relating to Carnivore, which included the "Enhanced Carnivore Project Plan." Redacted portions of that document mention "Cyber Knight," a database that sorts and matches data gathered using various Carnivore-like methods from e-mail, chat rooms, instant messages, and Internet phone calls. It also matches files with captured
encryption keys.
[1]
Its existence was confirmed by the FBI on December 12, 2001.
Badtrans, an illegal computer worm, has the same functionality as Magic Lantern, but infected random victims (instead of only carefully selected criminal suspects, as Magic Lantern would supposedly be used). Badtrans e-mailed the keylogs it gathered to several addresses. In mid-December of 2001 the FBI contacted at least one owner of the servers hosting the destination addresses and requested all the keylog data stolen from the victims of the worm -- as well as any available information about the perpetrator.
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