Showing posts with label #weird. Show all posts
Showing posts with label #weird. Show all posts

Thursday, December 14, 2023

Weird Spy News - MI6 Thanks Russian State Television for its “Help”


The head of Britain’s foreign intelligence agency has thanked Russian state television for its “help” encouraging Russians to spy for the U.K. after it translated and broadcast part of a speech he gave earlier this year in which he called on Russians to “join hands with us.”

Anchor Maria Butina — herself a former Russian spy — included the clip at the top of a program about Richard Moore, the head of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, also known as MI6.

Moore gave the speech in July at the British Embassy in Prague where he openly encouraged Russians faced with “the venality, infighting and sheer callous incompetence of their leaders” to spy for Britain. more
FutureWatch: Ms. Butina mysteriously falls from a 13th Floor window.

Saturday, November 25, 2023

Weirdest Spy Story of 2023?

NY Attorney Accuses Ben Affleck & Matt Damon of Stalking and Bugging Her Home

A New York attorney is suing actors Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, accusing the besties of stalking her and bugging her home to use private details of her life in their movies.


The attorney is hiding her identity as she moves forward with the bizarre case. The Daily Mail got a hold of court documents that claim the actors also hacked her devices and left the attorney in fear of being kidnapped and raped... She found a bug, saw an owl-shaped camera pointed at her home, woke to find a man in her bedroom and saw a man pointing a telescope at her after an alert that her emails had been hacked, according to the suit.

Also named in the suit are Affleck’s brother, Casey Affleck, his wife, singer/actress Jennifer Lopez, actor Kevin Smith, and disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. The suit is also targeting Dimension Films, Disney, Lionsgate, Warner Bros., and Paramount Pictures, who she is accusing of negligence for allowing harassment and plagiarism to take place. more

Wednesday, July 12, 2023

South Korean Spy Luck, or Pearls of Wisdom

For weeks, counterintelligence officials at South Korea's spy agency struggled to crack a tiny adversary — a locked USB stick that they believed was the key to proving that a South Korean labor activist followed orders from the North to foment unrest in the South...

The solution to this dilemma was randomly discovered by a NIS agent, who stumbled upon a string of gibberish written in the Latin alphabet that read, “rntmfdltjakfdlfkehRnpdjdiqhqoek,” in another data storage device owned by Seok. 

When the NIS agent typed out Korean letters in the same locations on a computer keyboard as these Latin letters in the same order, they spelled out, “Even three sacks of pearls only turn into treasure if you weave them together.”


The Korean proverb proved key to uncovering the cipher officials needed to crack the USB and the word document inside it. more

Saturday, June 24, 2023

Fishy Spy News, or Flipper Flips Sides

Russia's navy is using trained dolphins to step up security at its Sevastopol Black Sea fleet base, according to UK intelligence.
 The mammals are intended to "detect and counter" enemy divers, British intelligence reported.

Last month, the Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries advised beachgoers to "avoid contact" with a well-known beluga whale that's suspected of being used for Russian espionage. The warning came in response to the whale's travels to a densely populated area, putting him at far greater risk of injury or death. The whale, nicknamed Hvaldimir, became famous in 2019 after it was spotted wearing a specially made harness with mounts for a camera, leading to the "Russian spy" allegations. more

Wednesday, May 31, 2023

Alleged Russian 'Spy' Whale Spotted in Sweden

An alleged former Russian spy whale has been spotted off the coast of Sweden... 

Having spent years travelling slowly southwards from Norway's far north, the whale has sped up his movements out of Norwegian waters in recent months. 

OneWhale said the reason behind his sudden hastiness was unclear... 

He was discovered wearing a harness fitted with a GoPro camera mount and clips bearing the inscription "Equipment of St Petersburg". more

Friday, April 21, 2023

Top Harvard Scientist: Alien mothership might be spying on us from orbit...

Prof Avi Loeb claims we shouldn't dismiss the possibility that we have already been visited by extraterrestrial life.

It’s a conspiracy theory so prevalent it has entered the mainstream. Everyone, it seems, has heard of the idea that the US government is sitting on proof that extraterrestrials exist and have been visiting Earth for decades.

It’s easy to dismiss such stories, but seriously, could there be even a small amount of truth in it? Could extraterrestrial probes really be functioning near Earth? We don’t know. But Harvard astronomer Prof Avi Loeb’s Galileo Project aims to investigate... more

Monday, March 6, 2023

Non-Disclosure Agreements That End Up in the Toilet

The need for a Non-Disclosure Agreement used to be a hard pill to swallow. Not anymore. 
NDA is an edible confidentiality agreement that protects all information exchanged within 30 minutes of ingestion.

Contract Summary
NDA is an edible non-disclosure agreement that protects in perpetuity all information exchanged within 30 minutes of ingestion. Every NDA is comprised of a size 00 gelatin capsule imprinted with a QR code leading to this website and filled with powder made from copies of this agreement printed onto rice paper with ingestible ink. NDA can be executed by any number of people at once. Simply provide every party with their own capsule before executing the agreement. Parties can extend the duration of effect by consuming additional NDA. more

Friday, February 24, 2023

The Rest of the Story: US Government Has Been Dancing...

...Around UFOs for 75 Years

A legacy of hype, hysteria and fraud is undermining legitimate inquiry into those strange objects in the sky, whether you call them spy balloons, flying saucers or unidentified aerial phenomena...

...on June 24, 1947, when Kenneth Arnold, a businessman and pilot, spotted nine objects flying at unfathomable speed near Mount Rainier in Washington.

Arnold dutifully reported these to aviation officials. When pressed to describe the movement of the curious craft, he likened it to “a saucer skipping across the water.” This initial report went out across the news wires. Bored reporters eager to make something of the story ran with it, inventing details along the way.

In a few days, journalists had turned Arnold’s movement metaphor into something more material: a “flying saucer.” Arnold complained to veteran journalist Edward Murrow that newspapers had “misunderstood and misquoted me,” but to no avail. The idea of a flying saucer immediately captured the nation’s imagination, sparking a flood of alleged sightings. more  (Klaatu would not approve.)

Tin Foil Hats - When it is Not All in Your Mind

Tin Foil Hats - When it is Not All in Your Mind


Tuesday, January 10, 2023

"Well, shut my mouth!"

In the name of protecting your conversations...

Shiftall's Mutalk believes it can help.

The device looks like an eerie tech version of a mouth gag, but it's actually meant to help you talk more easily in the virtual and work worlds you may be interacting with. It calls itself a "soundproof Bluetooth microphone that makes it difficult for others to hear your voice and at the same time, makes it difficult for ambient noise to enter the microphone."

French startup Skyted created a similarly sound-absorbing mask to ensure privacy on calls while in crowded and noisy places. It looks more like a bulky version of the reusable masks we've all grown accustomed to during the pandemic, but Skyted says it absorbs 80% of voice vibration and directs it instead through a wireless Bluetooth connection to our phones or computers.

"My original concept was from a transportation perspective, as I focused on how we could keep the human voice from traveling to keep calls private, silent and confidential," Skyted CEO Stéphane Hersen said in a statement when announcing his device. more

Monday, December 26, 2022

FutureWatch: More Progress on the Electronic Dog Nose - TSCM Potential

Recap #1: Device can detect distress signals from plants that are harmed, under attack It turns out the best way to hear a plant scream is to smell it. (10/17/2008) more

Recap #2: Specially trained dogs have been used to sniff out covert electronic items, like cell phones in prisons, for quite a while now. The secret to detection is the device's electronic circuit boards. They contain these compounds: triphenylphosphine oxide (TPPO) and hydroxycyclohexyl phenyl ketone (HPK). This second compound is also found on CDs, DVDs, Blu-Rays, the old tech floppy disks. (5/18/2021) more

The latest development:
Researchers use biomimicry to enhance particle detection 16-fold by sniffing like dogs. more


FutureWatch: Technical Surveillance Countermeasures (TSCM) professionals have many types of technologies at their disposal for detecting illegal electronic surveillance devices. To name a few... Non-Linear Junction Detection, Infrared Thermography, and Radio-frequency Spectrum Analysis. We are now well on our way to adding EDN to our kit.

Sunday, December 18, 2022

Saturday, November 26, 2022

Best Opening Line of a Scam Email Ever (off topic)

Dear Friend, 

I am enchanted using this tremendous opportunity to converse with you in this medium of communication....

From, Mr. James Mensa, the accounting manager in the Bank of Africa Ltd., Ghana... offering me "US$4.6million us dollars." I declined the money, however the opening sentence is priceless. I'm stealing that for my own use. ~Kevin

Sunday, January 9, 2022

From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave Us...

"Gloworm" Eavesdropping and Air-Gaped Computer Hacks

After a long day at work, the modern goldfish no longer has to take public transportation home—it can drive via a fish-operated vehicle (FOV), according to new research published in Behavioural Brain Research.

Documented in a report published in the February 2022 issue of the peer-reviewed journal, researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beersheba, Israel, set out to unpack how well goldfish can navigate terrestrial environments when tasked with the right tools. They created a small camera-equipped fish tank on wheels, which they call an FOV, and put six goldfish in it, one at a time. 

The fish managed to avoid dead ends and correct inaccuracies... Goldfish navigate land very well, it turns out. more 

(Next up, Exocoetidaes in airplanes.) 

Wednesday, September 22, 2021

From the Weird File: Drone Strike by a Ravin' Raven

Is it a bird?
Is it a plane?
It's a raven swooping on a drone attempting to make a delivery to a Canberran craving caffeine.

Key points:

  • Drone service Wing temporarily halts its drone deliveries to the Canberra suburb of Harrison
  • The company says it has received reports of birds swooping on objects during nesting season
  • The pause on deliveries will allow bird experts to investigate the behaviour of ravens

A battle for aerial dominance is emerging as nesting season coincides with a surge in demand for drone deliveries during Canberra's lockdown.

Drone delivery service operator Wing has paused flights in the northern suburb of Harrison while bird experts assess the behaviour of local ravens to ensure their welfare is safeguarded. more

Thursday, September 9, 2021

FutureWatch: Laser Through a Keyhole Can Expose Everything in a Room (somewhat)

If you're worried about privacy, it might be time to cover up your front door's peephole.

Being able to see inside a closed room was a skill once reserved for super heroes. But researchers at the Stanford Computational Imaging Lab have expanded on a technique called non-line-of-sight imaging so that just a single point of laser light entering a room can be used to see what physical objects might be inside...

It’s an incredibly clever technique, and one day it could be a very useful technology for devices like autonomous cars that would potentially be able to spot potential hazards hidden around corners long before they’re visible to passengers in a vehicle, improving safety and obstacle avoidance...

The research could one day provide a way for police or the military to assess the risks of entering a room before actually breaking down the door and storming their way inside, using nothing but a small crack in the wall or a gap around a window or doorway.  more

Tuesday, August 31, 2021

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

Monday, August 30, 2021

Weird Files: Somewhat Covert Microphone is a Blast & Bugged Bugs

The GREEN12 is a cardioid directional, small diaphragm electret condenser microphone that is a great choice for users that are looking for a slim profile, high-quality microphone which is perfect for most professional, semi-professional, and home-recording applications. 

Its cardioid capsule and machined vents allow for high off-axis rejection and a focused recording, great for stringed acoustic instruments. 

The GREEN12 is handmade from an actual discharged 12Ga shell. more

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The first Asian giant hornet nest of 2021 was found Thursday morning, Aug. 19, in a rural area east of Blaine, about one-quarter mile from where a resident reported a sighting of a live Asian giant hornet on Wednesday, Aug. 11.

The state agriculture staff netted, tagged with a tracker and released three of hornets Aug. 11, to Tuesday, Aug. 17, according to a news release from the Washington State Department of Agriculture. One of the so-called “murder hornets” slipped out of the tracking device, another hornet was never located and one eventually led the team to the nest. more


Read more here: https://www.bellinghamherald.com/news/local/article253621598.html#storylink=cp

Tuesday, June 22, 2021

CCTV Company Pays Remote Workers to Yell at Armed Robbers

Clerks at 7-Eleven and other convenience stores are being constantly monitored by a voice of god that can intervene from thousands of miles away.Screen Shot 2021-06-18 at 2

In a short CCTV video, a clerk at a small convenience store can be seen taking a bottle of coffee from a cooler and drinking it. When he returns to the cash register, an unseen person's voice emits from a speaker on the ceiling and interrogates him about whether he scanned and paid for the item.

In another video, a cashier is standing behind the counter talking to someone just out of frame. There’s a 'ding' sound, and the voice from above questions the cashier about who the other man is—he’s there to give the cashier a ride at the end of his shift—then orders the man to stand on the other side of the counter.

The videos are just a few examples that Washington-based Live Eye Surveillance uses to demonstrate its flagship product: a surveillance camera system that keeps constant watch over shops and lets a remote human operator intervene whenever they see something they deem suspicious.  

For enough money—$399 per month according to one sales email Motherboard viewed—a person in Karnal, India will watch the video feed from your business 24/7. The monitors “act as a virtual supervisor for the sites, in terms of assuring the safety of the employees located overseas and requesting them to complete assigned tasks,” according to a job posting on the company's website. more


Tuesday, June 15, 2021

Football Team Launches Retaliation Drone

As football rivalries go, the one between Chile and Argentina is up there among the fiercest. So it should come as no surprise that when Chile's national team saw a drone hovering above a training session, it suspected its rival of spying ahead of Thursday's World Cup qualifier.

The team sent up its own drone which swiftly brought down the "spy-cam".

But rather than being a devious Argentine device, the drone turned out to be from a Chilean energy company. more