US Indictment: Chinese Firm Stole Motorola Trade Secrets

A federal indictment unsealed Monday accuses a Chinese telecommunications company of stealing technology from Illinois-based Motorola Solutions Inc., in another case highlighting longstanding fears about China pilfering vital U.S. business secrets to bolster its own economy...

In a 2008 email cited in the indictment, one unnamed individual writes to another that, “We are trying to grab whatever we can. … Do you have anything in mind that you need while we are still here?” In another, someone writes “haha” after describing Hytera as copying Motorola technology...

A Chinese-born American software developer, Hanjuan Jin, was convicted in 2012 of stealing secrets from Motorola... At trial, prosecutors said Jin “led a double life” as an outwardly loyal company worker plotting to steal Motorola secrets. more

The "loyal" insider has the time and opportunity to steal information, plant bugs, and take advantage of lax security procedures. Periodic sweeps for covert eavesdropping devices, with an information security survey, are how smart corporations reduce this risk.

2022 Olympics App Could Be Used for Spying

People traveling to China for the 2022 Winter Olympics—including athletes, government dignitaries, and corporate executives—are all at risk of personal data exposure and being surveilled by the Chinese regime, a data security expert warned. more

Beijing requires all athletes to install a smartphone app called MY2022 to report health and travel data while in China. The University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab reported the app as having significant encryption and security flaws and a censorship list (albeit currently inactive) of 2,442 “illegal words.”  The security flaws are by design, allowing authorities to access phones. Such subtle approaches are common among intelligence services.

All laptop communications will be monitored and provided, in near real time, to China’s security services. Chinese law requires the use of government-approved VPN (Virtual Private Network) providers for internet access. Use of non-approved VPN providers could result in criminal charges against the individual.

Cellphone tracking, onsite video surveillance systems, and facial recognition technology will be used to track the movement of each athlete. China has the most sophisticated facial recognition and associated artificial intelligence in the world, thanks in part to collaborations with U.S. universities and businesses.

Personal behavior will also be watched and catalogued by the Chinese government. more

History: Beverly Hills Spy

How a WWII-Era James Bond Betrayed the Allies

To his glamorous friends in Hollywood, Frederick Rutland was a dashing British war hero and a fixture of L.A. high society. To his Japanese handlers, he was Agent Shinkawa, an asset who provided critical intelligence in the lead-up to Pearl Harbor...

Rutland wasn’t the cloak-and-dagger type — he was one of the best known, and most well-liked, figures in L.A. society circles. “Squared jaw; well poised; highly intelligent; good personality; modest; gives appearance of affluence and breeding,” read the 300-page FBI dossier on Rutland, which was only recently declassified. 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

A Veterans Day Salute to Radio Eavesdroppers & Code Breakers

At age 97, Marjorie Stetson has never told anyone her secret code number — until now.

That's the identity code — 225 — that she typed on every page of her highly classified work for the Canadian Armed Forces during the Second World War.

The retired sergeant's wartime work was so covert, she said, she had to sign 15 separate copies of Canada's Official Secrets Act...

"She was on the front line of the radio war," said military historian David O'Keefe, who studies Second World War code breaking and signals intelligence...

Stetson used a radio receiver to intercept Japanese army and air force communications. She used a special typewriter to transcribe the Japanese codes she heard. Those number-filled documents were sent to code breakers in the U.S. and sometimes England, said O'Keefe — giving the Allies an intelligence edge in the Pacific region. more

BAT S#!T Crazy - Corporate Espionage Gone Wild

In the past week, a spate of reports, including from the BBC and the University of Bath, has detailed how British American Tobacco (BAT) ran a spy ring in SA.

Of course, none of this is new – we’ve been writing about it for aeons now. But because so much time has lapsed since this story initially broke in SA, perhaps a recap is in order.

Years ago, BAT took off the gloves in a bid to claw back market share from competitors who emerged selling the same product, but cheaper. 

BAT’S strategy was simple: disrupt its competitors to the point of making it impossible for them to operate. 

To do this, BAT relied on a security firm — Forensic Security Services (FSS) — to co-ordinate activities, under the guiding hand of British American Tobacco SA’s (BAT SA’s) anti-illicit trade head. But it also used a series of in-place “agents” at its competitors’ businesses even as it co-opted law enforcement agencies and deployed a shared agent with the State Security Agency (SSA): triple agent and honey trap Belinda Walter.

All of this was monitored from BAT’s global headquarters, Globe House in London.

One former employee explained it as follows: “Our primary work description was to spy on competitors and disrupt business operations on behalf of BAT SA, [which] was fully aware that FSS was obtaining information illegally, and these (sic) included obtaining recorded conversations.”  more

A Spy, a Botanist, and a Strawberry

The year was 1712. An engineer in the French Army Intelligence Corps named Amédée-François Frézier was sent by King Louis XIV on a reconnaissance mission to Chile. Between covert visits to Chilean military fortifications where he posed as a tourist in order to gain access, Frézier was also charged with documenting the local flora and fauna. One day he came upon a familiar sight: a berry that looked similar to one he knew from Europe, but significantly larger...

Frézier packed up some of these plants and took them back to France where they were planted among other species. The crossing of Fragaria chilenosis with another species from the new world, Fragaria virginiana, resulted in a hybrid that would eventually become the strawberry we know today... Eventually the hybrid made its way back across the Atlantic and took hold in North and South America.

Did you happen to notice our French spy's name, Frézier? That might sound familiar because the French word for strawberry is fraise. An ancestor of Frézier’s was knighted and bestowed the name by the king of France in the year 916 after offering his highness a gift of ripe strawberries. Seems it was Amédée’s destiny to become intertwined with this noble berry. more

Controversial Tool That Lets Kids Spy on Their Parents

A new tool that may give one or two parents -- and many, many kids -- pause for thought.

It's called Parent Track and it's the mindchild of environmentally caring soap brand Gelo.

The idea is that kids can install the Parent Track ad tracker onto their parents' devices. This will, well, guilt them into not buying environmentally questionable products and drive them to eco-positive awareness tools...

Not everyone will be positively moved by the message Gelo sends when a parent's device is signed up. 

It reads: "You just signed up this device, allowing us to follow your parents around the internet, reminding them to quit single-use plastics for good. By doing so, you set them on a more sustainable path and may very well have saved the planet. Our thanks just don't feel like enough."

Perhaps more parents buying Gelo products -- so that Gelo would make more money -- would feel like enough. more

Russian Spy Ship Loitering Near Trans-Atlantic Internet Cables

The Russian Navy related ship Yantar has turned up off the Atlantic coast of Ireland. An Irish Defence Forces spokesperson said that the Irish Navy is aware of the ship.

The ship carries a range of deep-diving submersibles and sonar systems and has been suspected of operating on undersea cables before.

Yantar took up a stationary position between two undersea internet cables on Tuesday morning. According to AIS (automated identification system) positions collected by MarineTraffic.com, the ship moved into a position between the cables around 4am local time. She has remained there for most of Wednesday before resuming her journey southwest. more

This Week in Spy News

Germany Arrests British Embassy Worker Suspected of Spying for Russia
Prosecutors accuse the British man of handing over documents to Russian agents for cash, amid growing concerns that Germany is increasingly caught in the cross hairs of international spying. more

A Chinese court has sentenced Canadian businessman Michael Spavor to 11 years in prison for espionage, more than two years after he was first detained. Spavor, a Beijing-based businessman who regularly traveled to North Korea, was sentenced after being found guilty of spying and illegally providing state secrets to foreign countries, the Dandong Intermediate People's Court said in a statement Wednesday. more

Despite a lack of evidence, the National Security Agency will investigate whether the Fox host was illegally targeted. The National Security Agency’s Inspector General Robert Storch has announced a review of whether the agency illegally conducted cyber-espionage and collected the electronic communications of Fox News opinion-show host Tucker Carlson, who has accused the NSA of trying to capture embarrassing information that might lead to him being taken off the air. more

US Warns Businesses in Hong Kong About Electronic Surveillance

The advisory, which was nine pages long, was issued by the Departments of State, Treasury, Commerce and Homeland Security. It alerted businesses to the possible risks associated with doing business in Hong Kong. According to the advisory, businesses are at risk from electronic surveillance without warrants and the disclosure of customer and corporate data to authorities. more

 

Facebook Reportedly Fired 52 Employees Caught Spying on Users

Facebook fired 52 employees for abusing their access to the social network’s user data — including creepy men who obtained location data on women they were romantically interested in, according to a new report. 

Using their access to troves of user data through Facebook’s internal systems, male engineers were able to view women’s locations, private messages, deleted photos and more, according to a bombshell report in the Telegraph...

While 52 employees were fired for such transgressions in 2014 and 2015, Facebook’s then-chief security officer Alex Stamos reportedly warned that hundreds of others may have slipped by unnoticed. more

Ikea Fined $1.3 Million Over Spying

A French court ordered home furnishings giant Ikea to pay some 1.1 million euros ($1.3 million) in fines and damages Tuesday over a campaign to spy on union representatives, employees and some unhappy customers in France.

Two former Ikea France executives were convicted and fined over the scheme and given suspended prison sentences. Among the other 13 defendants in the high-profile trial, some were acquitted and others given suspended sentences.

Adel Amara, a former Ikea employee who helped expose the wrongdoing, called the ruling “a big step in defense of the citizen….It makes me glad that there is justice in France.” more  previous stories

Guess Who Had Lower Pandemic Numbers

via John Jay College...

The COVID-19 pandemic is one of the reasons that national security investigations of possible terrorists and those working for foreign agents fell sharply last year, says a new government report. 

Far fewer targets underwent secret surveillance, according to NPR. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act empowers the FBI to monitor the communications inside the United States of people suspected of being agents of a foreign power. more

China Steps up Monitoring of Foreigners in Anti-Spying Push

Chinese social groups, enterprises and public entities will have increased responsibility to combat foreign espionage under new regulations issued by the country’s ministry of state security.

The regulations, which were released and took effect on Monday, come amid deepening hostilities between China and some western governments, including over the detention of foreigners accused of national security crimes.

According to state media, state security will work with other government departments to “adjust” the list of groups susceptible to foreign espionage and to develop measures to safeguard against it, including Chinese Communist Party and state organs, social groups, enterprises and public institutions. more

Spy History: KGB Spy in 1961 Used X-Ray to Crack U.S. Top-Secret Lock

In late 1961 [Robert Lee Johnson] received the top-secret clearance and was admitted into the vault as a clerk. At long last the KGB was in. […] Over the following weeks the infiltration began in earnest as he successfully copied the vault keys using clay molds supplied by KGB operatives. 

In October of 1961 he received a specially manufactured X-ray device from Moscow that he was instructed to place over the final lock in the vault; KGB technicians could then deduce what combination unlocked the vault by studying the cogs inside the locking mechanism...

On 15 December 1962, Johnson accessed the vault for the first time and looted its contents. The operation, extensively rehearsed beforehand, went exactly as planned and by 03:15 the following morning some of America’s most sensitive cryptographic and military information⁠—some of it classified higher than top secret⁠—was on its way to Moscow. more

IKEA France Accused of Spying on Employees – Call for Prison Sentence

In an ongoing court case, a prosecutor has demanded IKEA France be fined some €2 million - and for a prison sentence for a former CEO - with the company accused of spying on hundreds of employees.

After five days of the sometimes stormy trial, the Versailles prosecutor's office demanded an “exemplary” sentence be passed down, to send a “strong message” to “all commercial companies”."

The issue at stake in this trial is "the protection of our private lives in the face of a threat, that of mass surveillance", prosecutor Paméla Tabardel told the court.

Fifteen defendants took the stand during the case, including former Ikea France executives, shop managers, but also police officers and the head of a private investigation company. more

In Recent Spy News...

Spies may have been among those forced to work remotely by the coronavirus pandemic, say researchers from the Finnish Security and Intelligence Service Supo... According to Supo researcher Veli-Pekka Kivimäki, the number of online espionage targets has risen in part because of the increase in the number of people working remotely. more

The U.S. intelligence community concluded with “high confidence” that China didn’t attempt to change the outcome of the 2020 election, an assessment that contradicts repeated assertions by former President Donald Trump and his allies. more

Email-management provider Mimecast has confirmed that a network intrusion used to spy on its customers was conducted by the same advanced hackers responsible for the SolarWinds supply chain attack. more

Privacy-focussed search engine DuckDuckGo (DDG) called out Google for spying on users after the latter updated privacy labels on Apple’s App Store to show the type of data it collects from users. more

Iran has charged a French tourist with spying and “spreading propaganda against the system,” his lawyer said Monday, the latest in a series of cases against foreigners at a time of heightened tensions between Iran and the West. more

A 22-year-old Army personnel has been arrested on charges of spying and leaking confidential information to Pakistani agents. Akash Mehria, who hails from Sikar, was allegedly honey-trapped and was supplying information to woman Pakistani agents. more

Podcast studio Wondery has released the first audio trailer for Spy Affair, a new six-part miniseries. The show, which premieres March 30th on Apple Podcasts, investigates the true story of Russian gun advocate Maria Butina, who was convicted in 2018 of conspiring to act as a foreign agent within the United States. more

China to soon try 2 Canadians on spying charges... A Communist Party newspaper says China will soon begin trials for two Canadians arrested in apparent retaliation for Canada's detention of a senior executive for Chinese communications giant Huawei Technologies. more

How to Hire a Genuine Hacker For Cell Phone Spying Easily... Would you like to hire a genuine hacker for cell phone spying anonymously? All we know that finding real professional hackers on the internet is as difficult as finding water in the desert. We have come to highlight some of the special aspects of cell phone hacking to alleviate your suffering. more

In post-war Armenia, spy mania running amok... Two spy scandals involving well-regarded organizations speak to Armenians’ loss of faith in the international community, as well as the opposition’s interest in taking advantage of that mistrust. Our weekly Post-war Report. more

Spymaster’s Prism by Jack Devine (book)

In Spymaster’s Prism the legendary former spymaster Jack Devine details the unending struggle with Russia and its intelligence agencies as it works against our national security. 

Devine tells this story through the unique perspective of a seasoned CIA professional who served more than three decades, some at the highest levels of the agency. He uses his gimlet-eyed view to walk us through the fascinating spy cases and covert action activities of Russia, not only through the Cold War past but up to and including its interference in the Trump era. Devine also looks over the horizon to see what lies ahead in this struggle and provides prescriptions for the future.

Based on personal experience and exhaustive research, Devine builds a vivid and complex mosaic that illustrates how Russia’s intelligence activities have continued uninterrupted throughout modern history, using fundamentally identical policies and techniques to undermine our democracy. He shows in stark terms how intelligence has been modernized and weaponized through the power of the cyber world.

Devine presents his analysis using clear-eyed vision and a repertoire of better-than-fiction spy stories, giving us an objective, riveting, and candid take on U.S.-Russia relations. He offers key lessons from our intelligence successes and failures over the past seventy-five years that will help us determine how to address our current strategic shortfall, emerge ahead of the Russians, and be prepared for what’s to come from any adversary. more

• Hardcover : 304 pages
• ISBN-10 : 1640123784
• ISBN-13 : 978-1640123786
• Item Weight : 1.74 pounds
• Dimensions : 5.98 x 9.02 inches
• Publisher : Potomac Books (March 1, 2021)
• Language: : English

 

Snatched from a Beach to Train North Korea's Spies

15 November 1977, Niigata, Japan: It was after sunset on a crisp November evening when Megumi Yokota left her last badminton practice. Sharp winds chilled the fishing port of Niigata, and the grey sea rumbled at its brink.

The lights of home were seven minutes' walk away.

Megumi, 13, with her book-bag and badminton racquet, said goodbye to two friends 800ft from her parents' front door. But she never reached it...

Out on the Sea of Japan a boat manned by North Korean agents was speeding towards the Korean Peninsula with a terrified schoolgirl locked in the hold...

The country's future leader Kim Jong-il, then head of its intelligence services, wanted to expand his spy programme. Kidnapped foreigners weren't just useful as teachers. They could be spies themselves, or Pyongyang could steal their identities for false passports. They could marry other foreigners (something forbidden to North Koreans), and their children, too, could serve the regime. more