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The FBI has used a secret form of spyware in a series of investigations designed to nab extortionists, database-deleting hackers, child molesters, and hitmen, according to documents obtained by CNET News. One suspect used Microsoft's Hotmail to send bomb and anthrax threats to an undercover government investigator; another demanded a payment of $10,000 a month to stop cutting cables; a third was an alleged European hitman who was soliciting for business from a Hushmail.com account. CNET News obtained the documents -- totaling hundreds of pages, although nearly all of them were heavily redacted -- this week through a Freedom of Information Act request to the FBI. The FBI spyware, called CIPAV, came to light in July 2007 through court documents that showed how the bureau used it to nab a teenager who was e-mailing bomb threats to a high school near Olympia, Wash. (CIPAV stands for Computer and Internet Protocol Address Verifier.) A June 2007 memo says that the FBI's Deployment Operations Personnel were instructed to "deploy a CIPAV to geophysically locate the subject issuing bomb threats to the Timberline High School, Lacy, Washington. The CIPAV will be deployed via a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) address posted to the subject's private chat room on MySpace.com."

Salesmen and parents know the technique well. It's called the takeaway, and as far as Keith Mularski is concerned, it's the reason he kept his job as administrator of online fraud site DarkMarket. DarkMarket was what's known as a "carder" site. Like an eBay for criminals, it was where identity thieves could buy and sell stolen credit card numbers, online identities and the tools to make fake credit cards. In late 2006, Mularski, who had risen through the ranks using the name Master Splynter, had just been made administrator of the site. Mularski not only had control over the technical data available there, but he had the power to make or break up-and-coming identity thieves by granting them access to the site. And not everybody was happy with the arrangement. A hacker named Iceman -- authorities say he was actually San Francisco resident Max Butler -- who ran a competing Web site, was saying that Mularski wasn't the Polish spammer he claimed to be. According to Iceman, Master Splynter was really an agent for the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Iceman had some evidence to back up his claim but couldn't prove anything conclusively. At the time, every other administrator on the site was being accused of being a federal agent, and Iceman had credibility problems of his own. He had just hacked DarkMarket and three other carder forums in an aggressive play at seizing control of the entire black market for stolen credit card information. ....In the end they would regret that decision. Iceman was right