CIPAV Detection

[nihil]

wmaximus

Please think about this carefully, as this time I am not taking the piss

You won't be able to detect it, or it would be no damn good? just as Negative has already implied.

If it was just software hidden somewhere on your hard drive then you could get rid of it easily.

OK, get Darik's Boot & Nuke and overwrite the whole drive then reinstall your operating system and software.

Better still, get a new hard drive and install your software on that. Wipe the old one and lose it in some deep water.

My expectation is that it actually resides somewhere in your firmware, where you cannot access it without considerable knowledge and the right tools.

Is it illegal to poke around my own system?

From what I have seen of American law, nothing would surprise me.

If you are at all worried, just dump the thing on e-bay and buy a new one.

EDIT:

You might find this interesting:

http://www.infiltrated.net/cipav.pimp

However, as I have said elsewhere:

I don't know what it is or how it works, but if I were developing something like that I would want it to hide in firmware, rather than the hard drive.

I would also need the collusion of the ISP (not difficult I would imagine?) so that I could disguise the "phoning home" as normal traffic that would be allowed through the firewall and not seem particularly unusual?