DarkMarket_ Cyberthieves, Cybercops and You - Misha Glenny [11]
So he used the next computer upgrade as an opportunity to introduce the first restrictions. Thrilled with their sparkly and ever more powerful new machines, the GSA employees were prepared to accept that they could no longer download their favourite games or pastimes whenever they chose.
Again demonstrating an innate grasp of psychology, Darryl avoided overtly draconian methods. Facebook was a problem. A lot of employees were draining resources, using the social networking site when they should have been working. But increasingly this was also what the security industry calls an attack ‘vector’, an instrument that virus-makers can hijack in order to spread their wares.
Darryl figured that banning Facebook altogether might lead to rebellion in the workplace, so instead he allowed access to the site between 12 and 2 p.m., when most people took their lunch. By setting the Facebook time himself, he was also able to increase his monitoring of malware and hacking attempts, to ensure that the site did not compromise company security.
Gently he introduced a system of relatively powerful central control, without alienating any of the computer users at Grimley Smith. At the heart of the new order was a complex program called Virtual Network Computing or VNC. This was Grimley Smith’s very own version of Big Brother. If Darryl identified any unusual or threatening behaviour on the network, he could release the VNC from its virtual hibernation to swoop down and investigate in detail what was happening on any of the dozens of computers he now managed.
One morning, when staff logged onto their computers, Darryl sent a message warning everyone from the Managing Director downwards that henceforth anyone might be subject to screening by the Computer Manager. Unbeknownst to most, Darryl’s newly installed VNC was humming away merrily in the background. If he received an alert that somebody had downloaded a virus or was trying to install some unrecognised software, the VNC would be activated.
The VNC is a mighty powerful tool. To some, its use will appear like a straightforward business practice, but in the global Internet, deployment of VNC software is fiercely contested. In much of continental Europe, governments and companies are strictly forbidden from accessing any information on their employees’ computers that is not related to work (and even that is not easy). The monitoring of emails is strictly illegal.
Crime detection and civil liberties have always been uneasy bedfellows, but their coexistence has become significantly more troubled since the spread of the Internet, and this will continue in the future. In Germany, if a police officer is tracking a suspect anonymously over the Internet, he or she is legally bound to identify themselves as belonging to law enforcement, if asked by an online interlocutor. This makes very difficult the practice widespread in Britain and the United States of officers posing as underage girls and boys in order to entrap paedophiles who appear to be grooming children online. The deployment of a VNC is politically charged and circumscribed by important data-protection laws. So Darryl Leaning had to handle his pet with great care.
One day in early February 2008 an alert that warned of suspect software flashed up on Darryl’s screen. Unauthorised Application: Messenger. Darryl’s systems were looking out for several different types of unauthorised application. The word ‘Messenger’ suggested that someone was trying to install or operate some form of communications package like Skype. Within minutes Darryl had traced its origin to one of the chemical engineers who represent the backbone of GSA’s business. Walking over to the workstation in question, Darryl decided simply to ask him outright whether he was running any new instant messenger on his machine.
‘And he turned to me quite cooly and said “No!” He flatly denied it. So I replied, “Oh, okay. That’s weird, though, because I just had a warning saying that this computer