Remote Desktop

I had this conspiracy idea years and years ago, and over the past decade, it seems it has turned out to be a true one, reinforced by the headlines that appear every few weeks.

I'm old enough to have been alive for most of the computer age... at least the consumer version.

I've never really been a programmer myself, but have hung out in circles with programmers, and always lived with and around computers.  One day, I had an idea about a computer problem that could exist, but we'd never really know.

I have always said I don't really worry much about what strangers know about me.  The paranoid fear this every day, but I've always thought that strangers who may be watching me, or listening to me, or tracking my actions must have a reason, and in the end - maybe I'll benefit.  However, this changes when you can't trust the people snooping.  If all they do is look and record that is different than people getting in and fiddling or changing stuff.  If a spy watches you, that isn't as bad as a robber who steals fro you or a hacker who deletes or edits files.

I take this opportunity to say I am an excellent spellchecker and author.  Any errors were created by hackers after the fact, to make me look bad.

We can never really know what others are doing in today's society.  We learn about all the evil as time progresses and new revelations of evil are introduced with an apology.  They're always sorry they got caught, and fake being sorry for having done it.  Computers give evil a lot of opportunity to spy on us and monitor what we do.  Today, we have a term called SPYWARE which refers to software which exchanges information about our actions with a third party.  Some spyware is basic, monitoring web ads we click, or pages we visit - but the potential for spyware to be super evil and powerful has always existed, and I've always thought - how could we know.

Anything can spy on us.  Everything that is connected to the Internet can send data, and we'd never know.  If it's a big conspiracy theory, it could even use technologies they just have not told us about. 

All we need to do to keep any secret, is not tell anybody.

Even if you think the lights on your modem or router will blink when you send data over the net, who is to say that there isn't a secondary way to exchange information without flicking the lights?

I bought a new off brand IDE RAID hard drive controller card for my PC this week.  How do I know it doesn't contain special spyware code in this hardware card?  It could easily be created by some smart tech minded hacker and contain a hidden version of remote desktop.

I sometimes use a tool called VNC.  VNC is a remote desktop tool which allows people to share the operation of the computer over a network connection of the Internet.  It allows me to use your computer as if I were sitting there in front of it.  The actual software program is very tiny.  It could easily be included within any other software or hardware program I buy or install on my computer.  I have no way of knowing that this new hard drive controller doesn't have a secret password protected back door version of a tool, like VNC.  As soon as I go to sleep, some hacker in another city gets to log in and use my computer.

If I were a hacker, I could sell these no-name IDE controllers and then browse every one's files at will.  In fact, VNC and tools like it have the ability to log into my computer and use it - even at the same time as I do.  They can access it as a network user, and not adjust my screen or mouse at all.  I could sell the infected hardware on Ebay.  I could make boxes and manuals that have no name, and post a dozen fake claims that the product is great. People all over the world install them, and then I could gain Internet access to their machines at any time. 

I think about this kind of thing a lot.  ANY shareware could include it, and now I'm thinking hardware could too.  I seem to be hearing the term "takes control of your PC" a lot in the news these days.  It means that programs are doing this.  We're led to believe it's a virus or spyware and easy to detect and prevent against, but what if we're only looking at the obvious ones.  The smart people creating these tools know we'll be looking for them, so they create decoys we find - giving us a false sense of security... but all the while, our hardware is still doing it.