Government Email Scanner on Yahoo Was "Actually a Secret Hacking Tool"

[engine]

This e-mail scanning issue with Yahoo [webmasterworld.com] is rumbling on, and a report on Motherboard suggests it was a bug ridden "piece of malware."

The spy tool that the US government ordered Yahoo to install on its systems last year at the behest of the NSA or the FBI was a “poorly designed” and “buggy” piece of malware, according to two sources closely familiar with the matter.

Last year, the US government served Yahoo with a secret order, asking the company to search within its users’ emails for some targeted information, as first reported by Reuters this week. It’s still unclear what was the information sought, but The New York Times, citing an anonymous official source, later reported that the government was looking for a specific digital “signature” of a “communications method used by a state-sponsored, foreign terrorist organization.” Government Email Scanner on Yahoo Was "Actually a Secret Hacking Tool" [motherboard.vice.com]

[bill]

The consistent point here is that the security team was bypassed when implementing this. That's an odd way to run things internally.