Although South Africa is the focus of this particular article, the situation is the same in your country. Business espionage has reached critical mass. Corporate problem-o-meters are smoking...
South African companies are increasingly spying on each other as commercial competition hots up, an investigation by the International Bar Association (IBA) has found. ...indications are that SA companies are being hit by industrial espionage on a large scale.
Industry experts say it costs between R5,000 ($700.00) and R10,000 ($1,400.00) to hire a spy to install a telephone bugging device, and thereafter there is a daily fee for collecting and delivering the recordings to the client.The most common methods used by spies are the bugging of rooms and the tapping of telephones.
Eavesdropping on businesses has become easier as bugs have become more available, cheaper, more powerful and smaller. A concealed MP3 player, for example, can record days of conversation. A phone bug can be planted in a room and dialed into from anywhere — the call often escapes detection because it resembles an ordinary cellphone call.
These are “the current bugs of choice” and are readily available from electronic hobby shops and on the Internet — and are cheap enough to be disposable.
Other James Bond-style gadgets that are easily concealed include video cameras as small as a sugar cube, and fake smoke detectors with hidden wireless cameras. Some of the latest video recorders are the size of a cigarette 20-pack.
Tim Jackson (an information security expert) gave two examples of the type of thing that is happening. In one case, he found a cellphone modified to work as a bugging device that was hidden in the ceiling of a boardroom at a medium-sized insurance company in Johannesburg. The spy was able to dial into the cellphone from anywhere in the world and eavesdrop on board meetings.
In the other case, Jackson found automatic telephone recorders hidden in an unused storeroom in the parking basement of a large pharmaceutical company in Johannesburg.
Jackson said spies were switching to more sophisticated devices — such as digital recorders that can record non-stop for up to two weeks. (more)
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