How could this work?

Sahir,

I had a quick look at the Cain and Able site you posted. Wow I only read the details on the main page, but boy does it look good. Have you tried it at all? and is it easy to use?

I've not downloaded it, but I will mention it to the bishop and see what he thinks. We may need to set it up on a test rig and have a play

It's private in the sense that the information they collect is not publicly available. If you following someone's history with Google, you could build a case a lot better than the FBI ever could through filtering the internet for explicitely illegal keywords. Which is a point recent articles have made in publications like wired.com.

www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,67982,00.html

I don't have the same paranoid view as the writer of this article, I just think Google has a lot more information than most people think.

Sahirhs article on Carnivore reinforces my view; it mat be the best interception system since sliced bread but it's focussed - they identify a suspect, then get a court order, then write some filters, then plug it in. That's a very different thing to the global surveillance "big brother is listening to everything everybody says all at the same time" myth

But don't the military listening stations (that don't exist ) use this kind of technology. I believe the "listen" into the airways and pick out the conversations they want. This I believe is done on all types of phone call, landline, satellite and mobile. In addition, I'm sure I read somewhere that they can intercept Email conversations as well. Or is that just another "Big Brother" type rumour :

I've used Cain and Abel and it's pretty scary!!!

It can be used to find passwords located in caches anywhere on your PC. e.g. MSN, Webforms, etc. It can also be used to sniff passwords from the network as well as in ARP poisoning (man in the middle) attacks. The list goes on...

So, is Cain and Abel worth having a play with then? Myself and the bishop are thinking of downloading it and running it on a test rig.