The Spy at Harriton High

“This investigation into the remote spying allegedly being
conducted against students at Lower Merion represents an attempt to
find proof of spying and a look into the toolchain used to
accomplish spying. Taking a look at the LMSD Staff List, Mike
Perbix is listed as a Network Tech at LMSD. Mr. Perbix has a large
online web forum footprint as well as a personal blog, and a lot of
his posts, attributed to his role at Lower Merion, provide insight
into the tools, methods, and capabilities deployed against students
at LMSD. Of the three network techs employed at LMSD, Mr. Perbix
appears to have been the mastermind behind a massive, highly
effective digital panopticon. PanoMasterMind

“The primary piece of evidence, already being reported on by a
Fox affiliate, is this amazing promotional webcast for a remote
monitoring product named LANRev. In it, Mike Perbix identifies
himself as a high school network tech, and then speaks at length
about using the track-and-monitor features of LanRev to take
surreptitious remote pictures through a high school laptop webcam.
A note of particular pride is evident in his voice when he talks
about finding a way outside of LANRev to enable “curtain mode”, a
special remote administration mode that makes remote control of a
laptop invisible to the victim. Listen at 35:47, when he says:

“”you’re controlling someone’s machine, you don’t want them to
know what you’re doing” -Mike Perbix

“It isn’t until 37 minutes into the video till Perbix begins
talking about the Theft Tracking feature, which causes the laptop
to go into a mode where it beacons its location and silent webcam
screenshots out to an Internet server controlled by the
school.”

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