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| Opponents of the government in Syria have been spied on using many different hi-tech tools |
Widely used
security software has been discontinued after its creator discovered the Syrian
government was using it to spy on its opponents.
The
"disgusting" way the DarkComet Remote Admin Tool (Rat) was being used
in Syria had led to its production being halted, said Jean-Pierre Lesueur.
He said his
intention had only ever been to produce tools that were better than those
commercially available.
Experts
welcomed DarkComet's demise, saying the Rat was being widely abused.
Syria's use
of the tool emerged earlier this year as the government sought to keep tabs on
opponents in the country's ongoing civil conflict.
Once
DarkComet is installed on a target PC it allows remote access to that machine
and can log any activity on it.
The Syrian
government attempted to use this function of the Rat by trying to trick its
opponents into opening a booby-trapped Skype chat message.
In a
message posted to the DarkComet website, Mr Lesueur said he was ending the
project after four years of work because of the widespread "misuse of the
tool".
He said it
was never his intention for the tool to be used by hacker groups and he did not
want to be held responsible for what people, and governments, had done with
DarkComet.
Mr Lesueur
said he would continue working in computer security but only on projects that
could not be turned to malicious ends.
Rat poison
The
decision to shut down DarkComet means there will be no future versions, but
nothing has been done to remove copies of the programs already in use.
Rik
Ferguson, director of security research in Europe for Trend Micro, said he and
many other professionals had used DarkComet for penetration testing and malware
detection but not as a management tool.
However, he
said, the overwhelming use of DarkComet was by those with malicious or dubious
intentions. He said some of the tool's menu items and functions made it hard to
believe it was intended entirely for legitimate use.
"It
was no surprise to hear of the Syrian regime using this Rat to spy on their
population," Mr Ferguson told the BBC. "It follows in the grand
tradition of using Rats in targeted, politically motivated attacks such as
LuckyCat, Gh0stnet and Shadownet."
He added:
"It's not often you can welcome the demise of anything, however, let's
hope DarkComet is only the first Rat to take the poison."
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