“The affidavit also asks for the authority to deploy a network investigative technique (NIT)—the FBI’s term for a hacking tool—on any computer that logs into the site, regardless of its location.
‘The NIT may cause an activating computer—wherever located—to send a computer controlled by or known to the government, network level messages containing information that may assist in identifying the computer,’ it reads. In this case, the NIT grabbed targets’ real IP address, MAC address, operating system and architecture, computer Host Name, and username.
Critics are worried that the language of NIT applications is too vague for judges to grasp what exactly it is they are authorizing; the words ‘malware’ or ‘hacking’ are never used, for example. “
Source: Here Is the Warrant the FBI Used to Hack Over a Thousand Computers | Motherboard
