This person's logic works for me, and having "ground-truthed" their thinking, will second their assessment that this is a hoax. Clever use of the DHS memo, but as I said, sometimes the best hoaxes have a grain of reality in them. :)
-rf < snip > (Explanation from Anonymous 2) I need something more than the word of one unidentified person with a single web page hosted in Germany before I start worrying about this. The page http://www.chromance.de/wtf/lol.htm has a filename that suggests humor or comedy; http://www.chromance.de/wtf/ and http://www.chromance.de/ both give 403 pages. I think it's a prank, and not a particularly believable one; the assertion that a Dell tech support rep would spit out some techno-babble, and then hang up on a customer, seems kind of weak. I've known people in phone support, and they're not supposed to hang up on customers unless the customers are swearing or otherwise abusive; even then, they're supposed to threaten to hang up before actually doing it. There are no pictures of anything but the supposed keylogger itself, and one attachment point to a bit of metal. There's honestly no evidence this person even has a Dell 600m, never mind that this circuitry came out of it. And there's no way to contact the author to say, "Could you supply some more information? Some better photos? A larger and more detailed scan of the purported letter from the DHS? Ah-ha! Just found the final clincher, in my opinion: the "file numbers" match those supplied in a response to a FOIA request by Reps. Louise Slaughter and John Conyers, regarding the Jeff Gannon affair. The response from Kathy J. Lyerly of the DHS is shown on a site of unknown integrity called "Raw Story", but it seems to be a near-perfect match for the actual FOIA request itself, which can be seen on Rep. Slaughter's own web site. And the shape and details of the addressee block on the FOIA response on Raw Story are a match for the corresponding blurred-out area in the letter shown on the page in Germany. I'm calling "verified hoax" on this one; even if the letter shown on Raw Story weren't authentic )and I have no reason to doubt it right now), it sure as hell looks like the source for the chromance.de letter. > (c/o Anonymous) > > Interesting, but unverified report of a hardware-based keylogger being > discovered inside Dell 600-series laptops. > > http://www.chromance.de/wtf/lol.htm > > Were it not for the person's claim that DHS' response was that such > information was "exempt" from FOIA, I'd not be relaying this as-yet unverified > report. But then again, the best hoaxes have a schmidgen of believability to > them.....so until it's confirmed elsewhere, I'm tossing this to the list with > the usual rumor-control caveats to see if anything comes from it. > > Hoax, Rumor, or True? Anyone have any information/insights? > > -rick > Infowarrior.org You are a subscribed member of the infowarrior list. Visit www.infowarrior.org for list information or to unsubscribe. This message may be redistributed freely in its entirety. Any and all copyrights appearing in list messages are maintained by their respective owners.
