US gov't hacking into gaming consoles —report

The US government has commissioned a California-based firm to look into game consoles to watch criminals —especially child predators— and collect evidence against them, a hacker news site reported recently.

 

A report on The Hacker News said the government awarded a $177,000 contract to Obscure Technologies to develop tools that can be used to extract data from consoles like Microsoft’s Xbox and Sony’s PlayStation.

 

It quoted officials as saying the US Navy is executing the contract with Obscure Technologies on behalf of the Department of Homeland Security because of the Navy’s expertise in the field.

 

The report said the government claims pedophiles and terrorists are using communication modes available only through video game systems to lure in children and plot possible attacks.

 

Video game platforms rely on heavy-duty encryption to keep any sort of person-to-person correspondence made through their systems hard to uncover.

 

The Hacker News report said the DHS believes that once Obscure cracks that code, it will be able to provide a procedure that law enforcement can use in furthering investigations.

 

“Anyone who has ever played a few games of Call of Duty or Halo online knows that communities like Xbox Live aren’t exactly models of good behavior. But the federal government believes the occasional bursts of profanity may not be the worst of what’s going on according with consoles, and it wants a way to dig deeper,” The Hacker News said.

 

Citing contracting and tasking documents, The Hacker News said Obscure Technologies was regarded as the sole company found with the expertise to execute the contract.

 

The contract will run through July, it added.

 

It also noted Obscure’s scientists had reversed-engineered Microsoft’s Xbox.

 

“Of course, what the government is interested in is not the game itself, but the platform and the way you use it. Video game consoles have evolved beyond simple entertainment machines into powerful all-purpose devices that are used to watch movies, post on Facebook, or  more important to an FBI or CIA agent chat with other players,” The Hacker News said.

 

Privacy concerns

 

However, the report noted an obvious issue with privacy, adding the DHS is very aware of those issues.

 

“This project requires the purchasing of used video game systems outside the U.S. in a manner that is likely to result in their containing significant and sensitive information from previous users. We do not wish to work with data regarding U.S. persons due to Privacy Act considerations. If we find data on U.S. citizens in consoles purchased overseas, we remove the data from our corpus,” states the contract. Simson Garfinkel, a computer science professor at the Navel Postgraduate School (NPS) said.

 

Garfinkel said law enforcement agencies contacted the DHS’s Science and Technology Directorate in 2008 and requested help in analyzing gaming systems seized during court-authorized searches.

 

While some tools exist to extract data from gaming consoles, the consoles are hard to crack as they are designed with copyright protection systems, he added. — TJD, GMA News