The USB Spycam - Widely Used - Know What it Looks Like

FL - A Titusville man used a hidden recording device to make videos of several people showering and using the bathroom at his home without their consent, according to the Brevard County Sheriff's Office. 

One of the two realized the USB charger in Moist's bathroom was suspicious and recalled using it to charge her phone when she housesat for him in the past. The device was inspected and an SD memory card was found inside, according to arrest reports.  more

Mar-a-Lago Intruder Caught with USB Stick Loaded with Malware

A Chinese woman carrying a thumb drive loaded with malware was detained at Mar-a-Lago Saturday after trying to gain access to events advertised on Chinese-language social media by Li “Cindy” Yang, the South Florida massage parlor entrepreneur who also ran a business selling access to President Donald Trump and his family.

The woman, Yujing Zhang, has been charged with two federal crimes: making false statements to a federal officer and entering restricted property.

She was carrying four cellphones, one laptop, one external hard drive and a thumb drive, according to court records. In a charging document, a Secret Service agent said a preliminary forensic examination of the thumb drive showed it contained “malicious malware.” The court filing did not provide further details about the nature of the malware. more

See our report on dangerous USB sticks, and what to do about them.
Worried about a person like this entering your premises? Call us.

This Week in Spy News

US - The July arrest and indictment of Maria Butina, a 29-year-old Russian woman accused of being a spy, sent shockwaves through Washington and left the political world wondering where she had come from. Her Instagram page showed a glimpse of what her life looked like in Russia while she was allegedly "laying the groundwork" to move to the United States and conduct high-level espionage on behalf of the Russian government. more

UK- SPY chiefs are to develop futuristic technology that will predict when and where terrorist attacks will take place. They are pumping millions into a project called “Unblinking Eye” to identify and keep watch on people who pose a security threat. A new cutting-edge system will monitor and analyse human behaviour and help security services act before an outrage is committed. It mirrors the sci-fi movie Minority Report, starring Tom Cruise, where cops use psychic technology to arrest murderers before they strike. more

US - A suspected Russian spy was employed for more than a decade at the US Embassy in Moscow before being fired last year, a senior administration official tells CNN. The woman, a Russian national, worked for the US Secret Service for years before she came under suspicion during one of the State Department regional security office's routine security reviews in 2016, the official said. The security office found the woman was having regular, unauthorized meetings with the Russian intelligence service, the FSB. more

US - Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s office was infiltrated by a Chinese spy who worked as her driver and attended official functions on her behalf for 20 years, according to new reports from Politico and The San Francisco Chronicle.

US - An engineer employed by General Electric Co. was arrested by the FBI and charged with using sophisticated techniques to steal digital files on the company's turbine technology to benefit his interest in Chinese companies that compete with GE... The federal criminal complaint says that in 2014, Zheng "downloaded more than 19,000 files from GE's computer network onto an external storage device, believed by GE investigators to have been a personal thumb drive." Federal authorities said that Zheng is a U.S. citizen and also holds citizenship in China. more

S. Korea - The country is in the grip of what's been described as a spy camera epidemic. Hidden cameras capture women - and sometimes men - undressing, going to the toilet, or even in changing rooms in clothing stores, gyms and swimming pools. The videos are posted online on pop-up pornography sites. Activists in Seoul now warn that unless more is done to prevent it, this type of crime is likely to spread to other countries and will prove difficult to stop. more (Too late. It already has.)

US - A local handyman has been charged with spying on his customers’ personal lives by installing hidden cameras in homes where he had done work. Alton police arrested Peter Mugford and charged him with five felony counts of unlawful wiretapping, two counts of burglary, violation of privacy, and stalking... Mugford allegedly used his profession as a contractor/handyman to get access to client homes and place hidden cameras in bedrooms, bathrooms, and other private areas of the home. Mugford would then return to the homes without the owners knowledge or consent to retrieve cameras and footage. more

...and The Hollywood Reports submits its Top 10 Best Spy Comedies list. See if you concur. My pick for #1 is Top Secret.

Air-Gapped Computers to be Ticked-off via USB Tick-Sticks

A cyber-espionage group is targeting a specific type of secure USB drive created by a South Korean defence company in a bid to gain access to its air-gapped networks. 

According to a blog post by researchers at Palo Alto Networks, this attack was carried out by a group called Tick which carries out cyber-espionage activities targeting organisations in Japan and Korea.

Researchers said that weaponisation of a secure USB drive is an uncommon attack technique and likely done in an effort to spread to air-gapped systems, these networks are normally not connected to the internet. more

Murray's USB Stick Warnings
 

USB Stick Security, or God Save the Queen

UK - Heathrow Airport officials have launched an internal investigation into how a USB memory stick containing the airport's security information was allegedly found on a London street...

The USB stick, which apparently held details such as the route which the Queen takes when using the airport and maps pin-pointing CCTV cameras and a network of tunnels and escape routes, was not given to police but instead was handed to a national newspaper, the Sunday Mirror.

The Sunday Mirror reported that an unemployed man said he was on the way to the library to search the internet for jobs when he found the USB stick in the leaves... he plugged the USB stick into a library computer a few days later and was amazed at what he found... more

Take away security tips...
• Encrypt information you put on a USB memory stick. Assume it will be lost or stolen.
• If you find a USB stick, don't plug it in. It may contain a virus. Dropping virus laden sticks in company parking lots is a simple spy trick.

Security Director Alert # 522 - Spying USB Power Plugs & Charging Cables

Freely for sale on Amazon's marketplace, and plenty of other online stores, are USB and iPhone cables that can be used to listen to your phone calls and track your location.

When these cables are connected to a power source they can use a SIM card to connect to a mobile network. The hardware is unsophisticated but can send both audio and very coarse location data to a third-party...

A more worrying feature is the ability of the cable to detect sound over a certain threshold and then call a pre-programmed number. Once it has done this is relays the sound near it, be that a phone call or conversation, and allows a third-party to listen in.

Not only are there cables that do this, there are also USB power adaptors for your wall outlet that have the same SIM functionality.

Cables and power adapters like this should also be something of a worry to firms that need their security too, they may well not be noticed by security checks and could be responsible for a lot of sensitive information walking out the front door. more

Best Practice: Include the inspection of cables and charging blocks as part of your TSCM inspections.

One New Solution to the USB Port Vulnerability

The USG is a small, portable hardware USB firewall that isolates a potentially harmful device from your computer. It's designed to prevent malicious USB sticks and devices laden with malware from infecting your computer...

The problem is that most computers automatically trust every USB device that's plugged in, which means malicious code can run without warning.

It's not just computers: Cars, cash registers, and some ATMs also come with USB ports (desk phones and printcenters, too), all of which can be vulnerable to cyberattacks from a single USB stick.

While the USG will protect against low-level USB attacks, it won't protect against malware stored on the flash drive itself.

Fisk explained on his Github page, where the code is available, that the project is "particularly useful for individuals and organizations that face advanced threats including corporate espionage or state sponsored attacks." more

Security Director Alert: The USB Leach

If you see this, call us...

"The LAN Turtle is a covert Systems Administration and Penetration Testing tool providing stealth remote access, network intelligence gathering, and man-in-the-middle monitoring capabilities.

Housed within a generic "USB Ethernet Adapter" case, the LAN Turtle’s covert appearance allows it to blend into many IT environments."
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"This is insane. No one at my work would notice this!"
-Pentest with Hak5 Student

more

Security Director Alert: USB Killer Stick II

Remember the USB Killer stick that indiscriminately and immediately fries about 95 percent of devices? (See the Security Scrapbook warning about it from last September.)

Well, now the company has released a new version that is even more lethal! And you can also buy an adapter pack, which lets you kill test devices with USB-C, Micro USB, and Lightning ports.

Further Reading: USB Killer, yours for £50, lets you easily fry almost every device

If you haven't heard of the USB Killer before, it's essentially a USB stick with a bunch of capacitors hidden within. When you plug it into a host device (a smartphone, a PC, an in-car or in-plane entertainment system), those capacitors charge up—and then a split second later, the stick dumps a huge surge of electricity into the host device, at least frying the port, but usually disabling the whole thing...

The new USB Killer V3, which costs about £50/$50, is apparently 1.5 times more powerful than its predecessor, is more lethal (it pumps out eight to 12 surges per second), and is itself more resistant to setups that might cause the USB Killer to fry itself. more

Spybusters Tip #783 - Block your USB ports with a USB lock and security tape. Aside from Killer Stick sabotage, USB ports are virus injection portals.