Chaos Computer Club

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Chaos Computer Club
Logo CCC.svg
CCC Logo (Chaosknoten)
Formation 12 September 1981; 35 years ago (1981-09-12)
Berlin, Germany
Type NGO
Purpose Hacking
Location
Website ccc.de

The Chaos Computer Club (CCC) is Europe's largest association of hackers[1] with 5,500 registered members.[2] It is incorporated as an eingetragener Verein in Germany, with local chapters (called Erfa-Kreise) in various cities in Germany and other German-speaking countries. Some chapters in Switzerland are organized in the independent sister association Chaos Computer Club Schweiz instead.

The CCC describes itself as "a galactic community of life forms, independent of age, sex, race or societal orientation, which strives across borders for freedom of information...." In general, the CCC advocates more transparency in government, freedom of information, and the human right to communication. Supporting the principles of the hacker ethic, the club also fights for free universal access to computers and technological infrastructure.[3] It has been characterized as "...one of the most influential digital organisations anywhere, the centre of German digital culture, hacker culture, hacktivism, and the intersection of any discussion of democratic and digital rights."[4]

Members of the CCC have demonstrated and publicized a number of important information security problems.[5] The CCC frequently criticizes new legislation and products with weak information security which endanger citizen rights or the privacy of users. Notable members of the CCC regularly function as expert witnesses for the German constitutional court, organize lawsuits and campaigns, or otherwise influence the political process.

Activities[edit]

Regular Events[edit]

Chaos Communication Camp 2003 near Berlin, featuring the Pesthörnchen, a malapropism to the logo of the former Federal Post of Germany

The CCC hosts the annual Chaos Communication Congress, Europe's biggest hacker gathering. When the event was held in the Hamburg congress center in 2013, it drew 9,000 guests.[6] For the 2016 installment, 11,000 guests were expected.,[7] with additional viewers following the event via live streaming.

Every four years, the Chaos Communication Camp is the outdoor alternative for hackers worldwide. The CCC also held, from 2009 to 2013, a yearly conference called SIGINT in Cologne[8] which focused on the impact of digitalization on society. The SIGINT conference has been discontinued in 2014.[9] Another yearly CCC event taking place on the Easter weekend is the Easterhegg, which is more workshop oriented than the other events.

Publications, Outreach[edit]

The CCC publishes the irregular magazine Datenschleuder (data slingshot) since 1984. The Berlin chapter produces a monthly radio show called Chaosradio (de) which picks up various technical and political topics in a two-hour talk radio show. The program is aired on a local radio station named Fritz (de) and on the internet. Other programs have emerged in the context of Chaosradio, including radio programs offered by some regional Chaos Groups, and the podcast spin-off CRE by Tim Pritlove.

Many of the chapters of CCC participate in the volunteer project Chaos macht Schule which supports teaching in local schools. Its aims are to improve technology and media literacy of pupils, parents, and teachers.[10][11][12]

History[edit]

Founding[edit]

Wau Holland

The CCC was founded in Berlin on 12 September 1981 at a table which had previously belonged to the Kommune 1 in the rooms of the newspaper Die Tageszeitung by Wau Holland and others in anticipation of the prominent role that information technology would play in the way people live and communicate.

BTX-Hack[edit]

The CCC became world famous when they drew public attention to the security flaws of the German Bildschirmtext computer network by causing it to debit DM 134,000 in a Hamburg bank in favor of the club. The money was returned the next day in front of the press. Prior to the incident, the system provider had failed to react to proof of the security flaw provided by the CCC, claiming to the public that their system was safe. Bildschirmtext was the biggest commercially available online system targeted at the general public in its region at that time, run and heavily advertised by the German telecommunications agency Deutsche Bundespost which also strove to keep up-to-date alternatives out of the market.[citation needed]

Karl Koch[edit]

Main article: Karl Koch (hacker)

In 1987, the CCC was peripherally involved in the first cyberespionage case to make international headlines. A group of German hackers led by Karl Koch, who was loosely affiliated with the CCC, was arrested for breaking into US government and corporate computers, and then selling operating-system source code to the Soviet KGB. This incident was portrayed in the movie 23.

GSM-Hack[edit]

In April 1998, the CCC successfully demonstrated the cloning of a GSM customer card, breaking the COMP128 encryption algorithm used at that time by many GSM SIMs.[13]

Project Blinkenlights[edit]

Blinkenlights at the 22nd Chaos Communication Congress
Main article: Project Blinkenlights

In 2001, the CCC celebrated its twentieth birthday with an interactive light installation dubbed Project Blinkenlights that turned the building Haus des Lehrers in Berlin into a giant computer screen. A follow up installation, Arcade, at the Bibliothèque nationale de France was the world's biggest light installation.[citation needed] Later in October 2008, CCC's Project Blinkenlights went to Toronto, Ontario, Canada with project Stereoscope.[14]

Schäuble fingerprints[edit]

In March 2008, the CCC acquired and published the fingerprints of German Minister of the Interior Wolfgang Schäuble. The magazine also included the fingerprint on a film that readers could use to fool fingerprint readers.[15] This was done to protest the use of biometric data in German identity devices such as e-passports.[16]

Staatstrojaner affair[edit]

Mascot used to protest against the Staatstrojaner, a trojan horse
See also: FOXACID, MiniPanzer and MegaPanzer, and Magic Lantern (software)

The Staatstrojaner (Federal Trojan horse) is a computer surveillance program installed secretly on a suspect's computer, which the German police uses to wiretap Internet telephony. This "source wiretapping" is the only feasible way to wiretap in this case, since Internet telephony programs will usually encrypt the data when it leaves the computer. The Federal Constitutional Court of Germany has ruled that the police may only use such programs for telephony wiretapping, and for no other purpose, and that this restriction should be enforced through technical and legal means.

On October 8, 2011, the CCC published an analysis of the Staatstrojaner software. The software was found to have the ability to remote control the target computer, to capture screenshots, and to fetch and run arbitrary extra code. The CCC says that having this functionality built in is in direct contradiction to the ruling of the constitutional court.

In addition, there were a number of security problems with the implementation. The software was controllable over the Internet, but the commands were sent completely unencrypted, with no checks for authentication or integrity. This leaves any computer under surveillance using this software vulnerable to attack. The captured screenshots and audio files were encrypted, but so incompetently that the encryption was ineffective. All captured data was sent over a proxy server in the United States, which is problematic since the data is then temporarily outside the German jurisdiction.

The CCC's findings were widely reported in the German press.[17][18][19] This trojan has also been nicknamed R2D2[20][21] because the string "C3PO-r2d2-POE" was found in its code;[22] another alias for it is 0zapftis.[22] According to a Sophos analysis, the trojan's behavior matches that described in a confidential memo between the German Landeskriminalamt and a software firm called DigiTask (de); the memo was leaked on WikiLeaks in 2008.[22] Among other correlations is the dropper's file name scuinst.exe, short for Skype Capture Unit Installer.[23] The 64-bit Windows version installs a digitally signed driver, but signed by the non-existing certificate authority "Goose Cert".[24][25] DigiTask later admitted selling spy software to governments.[26]

The Federal Ministry of the Interior released a statement in which they denied that R2D2 has been used by the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA); this statement however does not eliminate the possibility that it has been used by state-level German police forces. The BKA had previously announced however (in 2007) that they had somewhat similar trojan software that can inspect a computer's hard drive.[19]

Domscheit-Berg affair[edit]

Former WikiLeaks spokesman Daniel Domscheit-Berg was expelled from the national CCC (but not the Berlin chapter) in August 2011.[27][28] This decision was revoked on February 2012.[29] As a result of his role in the expulsion, board member Andy Müller-Maguhn was not reelected for another term.

Chaos Computer Club France[edit]

The Chaos Computer Club France (CCCF) was a fake hacker organization created in 1989 in Lyon (France) by Jean-Bernard Condat, under the command of Jean-Luc Delacour, an agent of the Direction de la surveillance du territoire governmental agency. The primary goal of the CCCF was to watch and to gather information about the French hacker community.[30] Journalist Jean Guisnel said that this organization also worked with the French National Gendarmerie.

The name of the organization is directly inspired by the name of the German Chaos Computer Club organization, which in contrast is a real hacker organization.

The CCCF had an electronic magazine called Chaos Digest (ChaosD). Between January 4, 1993 and August 5, 1993, seventy-three issues were published (ISSN 1244-4901).

See also[edit]

See also: Category:Member of Chaos Computer Club.

References[edit]

  1. ^ "Chaos Computer Club". Chaos Computer Club. Retrieved August 23, 2016. 
  2. ^ "Chaos Computer Club". Chaos Computer Club. Retrieved 2017-01-08. 
  3. ^ Satzung des CCC e.V. (German). Accessed September 23, 2013.
  4. ^ /berlins-digital-exiles-tech-activists-escape-nsa
  5. ^ Anderson, Kent (2006), Hacktivism and Politically Motivated Computer Crime (PDF), retrieved 2008-05-14 
  6. ^ "Hacks and Highlights of the Chaos Communication Congress". Tech the Future. Retrieved 20 August 2014. 
  7. ^ "33C3 Call For Papers". 
  8. ^ https://events.ccc.de/sigint/2009/wiki/Hauptseite SIGINT Willkommen 2009
  9. ^ "SIGINT". Archived from the original on 2015-04-19. 
  10. ^ CCC. "Chaos macht Schule" (in German). Retrieved 2016-01-11. 
  11. ^ Anna Biselli. "Medienkompetenz, quo vadis? Teil III: Interview zum Projekt „Chaos macht Schule"" (in German). Retrieved 2016-01-11. 
  12. ^ Tim Pritlove, Florian Grunow, Peter Hecko. "CRE189 Chaos macht Schule" (in German). Retrieved 2016-01-11. 
  13. ^ CCC | CCC klont D2 Kundenkarte Archived May 30, 2008, at the Wayback Machine.
  14. ^ http://blinkenlights.net/stereoscope
  15. ^ CCC publishes fingerprints of Wolfgang Schäuble, the German Home Secretary, Heise Online, published 2008-03-31, Retrieved 2008-04-17
  16. ^ CCC publiziert die Fingerabdrücke von Wolfgang Schäuble [Update] – heise Security
  17. ^ "Chaos Computer Club analyzes government malware". Chaos Computer Club. 2011-10-08. Retrieved 2011-10-10. 
  18. ^ "CCC findet Sicherheitslücken in Bundestrojaner". Der Spiegel. 2011-10-09. Retrieved 2011-10-10. 
  19. ^ a b "Electronic Surveillance Scandal Hits Germany". Der Spiegel. 2011-10-10. Retrieved 2011-10-31. 
  20. ^ Basil Cupa, Trojan Horse Resurrected: On the Legality of the Use of Government Spyware (Govware), LISS 2013, pp. 419-428
  21. ^ German federal Trojan eavesdrops on 15 applications, experts find. The R2D2 surveillance Trojan also has support for 64-bit Windows systems Archived February 1, 2014, at the Wayback Machine.
  22. ^ a b c http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2011/10/10/german-government-r2d2-trojan-faq/
  23. ^ Leyden, John. "German states defend use of 'Federal Trojan'". The Register. 
  24. ^ http://www.net-security.org/malware_news.php?id=1882
  25. ^ http://kasperskycontenthub.com/securelist/2011/10/18/federal-trojans-got-a-big-brother-17/
  26. ^ http://www.dw.com/en/german-company-behind-government-spyware-admits-sale-to-bavaria/a-15453150
  27. ^ Top German Hacker Slams OpenLeaks Founder, Der Spiegel, August 15, 2011
  28. ^ Heather Brooke, Inside the secret world of hackers, The Guardian, August 25, 2011
  29. ^ CCC revokes decision to expel Domscheit-Berg
  30. ^ Phrack No. 64, "A personal view of the french underground (1992–2007)", 2007: "A good example of this was the fake hacking meeting created in the middle 1990' so called the CCCF (Chaos Computer Club France) where a lot of hackers got busted under the active participation of a renegade hacker so called Jean-Bernard Condat."

External links[edit]

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