How the FBI spies on suspects

Details of a nifty piece of kit used by the FBI to spy on the internet activities of suspected criminals have emerged during a court case in the US.

CIPAV, which stands for Computer and Intenet Protocol Address Verifier, allows agents to track what connections a suspect's computer has made with other machines, for instance by e-mail or browsing the internet.

The 'spyware', which is delivered to the suspect's machine in an e-mail or via a social networking account, was used last month to investigate a former student who pleaded guilty to making bomb threats to his high school.

In an 18-page affadavit filed in connection with the trial of Josh Glazebrook, a former student at Timberline High School, in Washington State, an FBI agent gave a description of how the software worked.

The information that could be accessed by CIPAV included "the computer's true assigned IP address, list of running programs, operating system (type, version, and serial number), internet browser and version, language encoding, registered computer name, current logged in user name, and the URL that the target computer was previously connected to," Agent Norm Sanders wrote in the affadavit, a copy of which was obtained by CNET news.

CNET quoted the affadavit as saying that the "exact nature of these commands, processes, capabilities, and their configuration is classified as a law enforcement sensitive investigative technique, the disclosure of which would likely jeopardize other ongoing investigations and/or future use of the technique."

The leaked document is understood to be the first to lay out in detail how the FBI uses electronic spyware.

In 2004 it was reported that the FBI had used an Internet Protocol Address Verifier that was sent via e-mail; two other cases in which the bureau is known to have used spyware involved agents sneaking into buildings to implant a key logger – software which records every keystroke a user makes – in machines, CNET said.