The Chatter Phone Eavesdropping Bug, or Santa's Latest Spy Trick

Ken Munro, founder of the cybersecurity company Pen Test Partners, told TechCrunch that chief among the concerns are that the Chatter does not have a secure pairing process to stop unauthorized phones in Bluetooth range from connecting to it...

First, we switched on the Chatter phone, which activates its Bluetooth connection, paired a phone over Bluetooth, then switched off Bluetooth to simulate someone walking the phone out of range. We then paired another phone with the Chatter without hindrance, allowing us to remotely control the Chatter’s audio.

Mattel, which makes the Chatter phone, said the phone “will time out if no connection is made or once the pairing occurs — it is only discoverable within a narrow window of time and requires physical access to the device.” We left the Chatter on and found the Bluetooth pairing process did not time out after more than an hour.

Then, Munro asked what would happen if we called the phone connected to the Chatter. Sure enough, the Chatter rang — loudly — as expected. Then we called the Chatter again, this time without properly replacing its receiver. With the handset off the hook, the Chatter automatically answered the call, immediately activating the handset’s microphone and allowing us to hear ambient background audio. more

 

 

Khashoggi's Wife's Phone Bugged With Spyware Before Killing

The mobile phone of Hanan Elatr, the wife of Saudi dissident and journalist Jamal Khashoggi was reportedly bugged by United Arab Emirates agents.  

The cell phone of Hanan Elatr was infected several months before he was killed in 2018. 

Jamal Khashoggi was killed in Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul, reported Sputnik citing The Washington Post. The phone of Elatr was reportedly infected when she was questioned by UAE officials.  more

Coach Banned Over Spying Scandal

Australia - Capitals coach Paul Goriss has been banned after obtaining leaked training footage of the Sydney Uni Flames. video

Fake Italian Gynaecologist Snares 400 Women in Webcam Scam

Italian police Friday searched the house of suspected serial sexual predator believed to have posed as a gynaecologist to persuade dozens of women to undergo vaginal exams via weblink. more

Millions of Android Phones Vulnerable Over ‘Eavesdropping’ Scare

MILLIONS of people around the world have been exposed to snoopers by dodgy microchips loaded into Android smartphones.

According to security experts, vulnerabilities in processors produced by Taiwanese firm MediaTek could have allowed malicious apps to spy on their users.

MediaTek, one of the world's leading chip-makers, last month issued a fix for four bugs disclosed by researchers at cyber firm Check Point.

Its circuitry is found in one in three of the world’s smartphones, including high-end handsets from Xiaomi, Oppo, Realme, Vivo and more.

Check Point detailed the vulnerabilities exposed by its crack team of cyber buffs in a blog post last week. more

 

Spy Trick # 712 - The Memory Card Ring (Make Your Own!)

Honus, a former bicycle industry designer turned professional jeweler can teach you how to make your own spy ring.  

This is how spies (and corrupt employees) can sneak file cabinets of documentation out of companies, no matter how good their security is. more  
more spy rings
Secret Message Decoder Ring Great Christmas gift

A New "Mobile" Phone - Complete with No Apps

Ever wish you had a mobile phone that would really turn heads?
One where you could call your friends, real or imaginary?
One that would look at you with loving eyes? 

Your past is now your future...  

FutureWatch: Yet Another World's Smallest Camera

Micro-sized cameras have great potential to spot problems in the human body and enable sensing for super-small robots, but past approaches captured fuzzy, distorted images with limited fields of view.

Now, researchers at Princeton University and the University of Washington have overcome these obstacles with an ultracompact camera the size of a coarse grain of salt. The new system can produce crisp, full-color images on par with a conventional compound camera lens 500,000 times larger in volume, the researchers reported in a paper published Nov. 29 in Nature Communications... 

Heide (Felix Heide, the study's senior author and an assistant professor of computer science at Princeton) and his colleagues are now working to add more computational abilities to the camera itself. Beyond optimizing image quality, they would like to add capabilities for object detection and other sensing modalities relevant for medicine and robotics.

Heide also envisions using ultracompact imagers to create "surfaces as sensors." "We could turn individual surfaces into cameras that have ultra-high resolution, so you wouldn't need three cameras on the back of your phone anymore, but the whole back of your phone would become one giant camera. We can think of completely different ways to build devices in the future," he said. more