Until Sunday night, the top new paid app on the Google Play store was a complete scam. Google Inc. quickly removed “Virus Shield” from the Google Play store, but not before thousands of people downloaded the fake anti-malware app, exposing a major flaw in the open strategy Google has taken with its mobile app marketplace.
"Virus Shield" claimed that it protected Android smartphone users from viruses, malware and spyware, and that it even improved the speed of phones. It touted its minimal impact on battery life and its additional functionality as an ad blocker. At only $3.99, "Virus Shield" sounded like a pretty good deal to the tens of thousands of people who downloaded it in less than two weeks.
Virus Shield downloads Google Play Store (screenshot by Android Police)
Those 10,000 people even seemed to enjoy "Virus Shield," as the app maintained a 4.7-star rating from about 1,700 users. Another 2,607 users recommended it on the Google Play store, helping “Virus Shield” get ranked as the No. 1 new paid app and third overall top paid app. (more)
Coming soon to Google Play, something that really works.
Ukraine’s secret unit of spy DOLPHINS that can plant bombs and attack divers with guns have defected to Russia.
- The Ukraine Army has been using dolphins and seals since the 70s
- After the fall of the USSR, the 'dolphin spies' remained in the Ukraine
- The dolphins have been trained to hunt for mines and plant bombs
- They can also attack divers with knives or pistols attached to their heads
- Now, military dolphins in Crimea will be transferred to the Russian Navy
While the dolphins show extraordinary intelligence, sometimes they disobeyed their Ukrainian commanders.
Last year three of five spy dolphins went absent without leave in the Black Sea - apparently in search of love, but returned to their duties shortly afterwards.
Yury Plyachenko, a former Soviet naval anti-sabotage officer, explained that this was something that had to be taken into account in working with the 007 mammals.
‘If a male dolphin saw a female dolphin during the mating season, then he would immediately set off after her. But they come back in a week or so.’ (more)
Metamaterials are already being used to create invisibility cloaks and "temporal cloaks," but now engineers from Duke University have turned metamaterials to the task of creating a 3D acoustic cloak.
In the same way that invisibility cloaks use metamaterials to reroute light around an object, the acoustic cloaking device interacts with sound waves to make it appear as if the device and anything hidden beneath it isn't there.
Steven Cummer, professor of electrical and computer engineering, and his colleagues at Duke University constructed their acoustic cloak using several sheets of plastic plates dotted with repeating patterns of holes. The plastic sheets, which were created using a 3D printer, were stacked on top of each other to form a device that resembles a pyramid in shape.
The geometry of the sheets and the placement of the holes interact with sound waves to make it appear as if the device and anything sitting underneath it isn't there. (more)
Developed by a team at the Georgia Institute of Technology, the device consists of a 1.5-mm-wide disc-shaped head, from which trails 13 tiny joined cables. The idea is that it will be inserted into a patient's coronary blood vessels or heart, snaking its way through while being pushed or pulled from outside the body via an integrated 430-micron-wide guide wire, all the while using the cables to transmit ultrasound imagery.
Its head is built around a single silicon chip, which is equipped with a dual-ring array of 56 ultrasound transmit elements and 48 receive elements. Much of the processing of the ultrasound data is performed onboard the chip itself, meaning that less information has to carried outside the body – this is why it requires no more than 13 cables, allowing its consolidated "umbilical cord" to stay skinny and flexible enough to easily move through blood vessels. (more)
The author of the anonymous Twitter feed purportedly recounting conversations in the elevators of Goldman Sachs has been unmasked as a former bond executive living in Texas who has never worked at the bank. The revelation hasn't affected John Lefevre's six-figure book deal with Simon & Schuster based on the feed @GSElevator. (more)
Google on Thursday unveiled Project Tango, an effort to "give mobile devices a human-scale understanding of space and motion" using a combination of robotics and computer vision.
The project has a prototype phone loaded with sensors and software "designed to track the full 3D motion of the device, while simultaneously creating a map of the environment," the Project Tango leader Johnny Lee said in a blog post. (more)
FutureWatch...
Smartphone business espionage spy tools are coming. A visitor to your organization will be able to walk out with a floor map, record the sounds of your manufacturing process (for later analysis), and use other sensors to gather competitive intelligence. And, they won't be as obvious as the folks you saw in the video.
Security Directors: I wasn't kidding. It is time to create a Surreptitious Workplace Recording Policy.
Need help?
Call me.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has now approved a device for use after an incomplete procedure (colonoscopy) that is minimally invasive and can achieve similar imaging results to a colonoscopy. PillCam Colon is a pill-sized camera that is swallowed and passes through a patient's gastrointestinal tract.
The device itself is a pill-sized video camera measuring 12 x 33 mm (0.47 x 1.3 in) that captures color video from both of its ends at 4 or 35 frames per second. An LED provides the necessary illumination for image capture and, once swallowed by the patient, it wirelessly relays footage to a recording device worn by the patient for approximately 10 hours. (more)
What if any object around you could play back sound at the touch of your finger? That is the idea behind Ishin-Denshin, an electronic art project that has just won an honourable mention at the ARS Electronica festival in Linz, Austria.
Ishin-Denshin works by getting the user to whisper a message into a microphone, which encodes the sound and then converts it into an electrical signal which modulates an electrostatic field around the human body. When the charged person touches their finger to another person's earlobe, the field causes it to vibrate slightly, reproducing the sound for the touched person to hear. The name comes from a Japanese expression meaning an unspoken understanding. (more)
Reason 1. - iPhone's fingerprint biometrics defeated, hackers claim.
Just one day after the new fingerprint-scanning Apple iPhone-5s was released to the public, hackers claimed to have defeated the new security mechanism. After their announcement on Saturday night, the Chaos Computer Club posted a video on YouTube which appears to show a user defeating Apple’s new TouchID security by using a replicated fingerprint. Apple has not yet commented on this matter, and, as far as I can tell, no third-party agency has publicly validated the video or the hacker group’s claim. In theory, the techniques used should not have defeated the sub-dermal analysis (analyzing three dimensional unique aspects of fingerprints rather than just two-dimensional surface images) that Apple was supposed to have used in its fingerprint scanner. (more)
Reason 2. - Mythbusters.
Reason 3. - When You're Busted.
Police can't compel you to spill your password, but they can compel you to give up your fingerprint.
"Take this hypothetical example
coined by the Supreme Court: If the police demand that you give them
the key to a lockbox that happens to contain incriminating evidence,
turning over the key wouldn’t be testimonial if it’s just a physical act
that doesn’t reveal anything you know.
However, if the police try to force you to divulge the combination to
a wall safe, your response would reveal the contents of your mind — and
so would implicate the Fifth Amendment. (If you’ve written down the
combination on a piece of paper and the police demand that you give it
to them, that may be a different story.)" (more)
We continue to keep tabs on the next really big thing in eavesdropping - mind reading. Still way off in the future, advances are being made every year.
Here is the latest...
By analyzing MRI images of the brain with an elegant mathematical model, it is possible to reconstruct thoughts more accurately than ever before. In this way, researchers from Radboud University Nijmegen have succeeded in determining which letter a test subject was looking at. The journal Neuroimage has accepted the article, which will be published soon. A preliminary version of the article can be read online.
‘In our further research we will be working with a more powerful MRI
scanner,' explains Sanne Schoenmakers, who is working on a thesis about
decoding thoughts. ‘Due to the higher resolution of the scanner, we hope
to be able to link the model to more detailed images. We are currently
linking images of letters to 1200 voxels in the brain; with the more
powerful scanner we will link images of faces to 15,000 voxels.' (more)
Since the 1970's, stories about laser listeners have periodically popped up in the news. The common thread is their magical ability to eavesdrop from far away using only an invisible beam of light. Fear mongering is the next element, closely followed by, "very expensive, only the government can buy one."
The reporters are either clueless or haven't done any decent research. Their information sources have vested interests: like governments spreading disinformation; or "de-bugging experts" and spyshop owners hoping the publicity will boost their business. Funny, a working device is never demonstrated, and nobody even claims first-hand knowledge.
Today, the BBC fell victim. Here is the story they published...
 |
| Not true. |
The UK government has warned the Guardian newspaper that foreign agents could use laser technology to eavesdrop on them, in the wake of recent surveillance leaks. What are laser listening devices and are they effective? (more)
The theory is sound. CD / DVD players use it on a small scale. YouTube is full of videos demonstrating the technique... under very controlled conditions, with less than sterling results. But, is it really a practical surveillance tool? Click here for our research.
Access the settings by opening the Google Settings app from your Android app drawer and tapping the option for Android Device Manager.
From there you can choose whether to enable remote location or wiping. This lets you login to the Android Device Manager website and find your phone on a map, cause your device to ring so you can find it if it’s in your other pants pocket or lost in couch cushions, or perform a factory reset if the phone’s been lost or stolen. (more)
Ambient Backscatter research is in its infancy.
Imagine the possibilities.
Technical espionage could see its biggest advancement since the transistor.
A hacker was able to shout abuse at a two-year-old child by exploiting a vulnerability in a camera advertised as an ideal "baby monitor".
ABC News revealed how a couple in Houston, Texas, heard a voice saying lewd comments coming from the camera, made by manufacturer Foscam.
Vulnerabilities in Foscam products were exposed in April, and the company issued an emergency fix.
Foscam said it was unable to provide a statement at this time.
However, a UK-based reseller told the BBC it would contact its entire customer database to remind them "the importance in setting a password to their cameras".
The spokesman added that it would be urging Foscam's head office - based in Shenzhen, China - to send out a memo to all its resellers suggesting they too contact their customers.
The BBC has found evidence of hackers sharing information on how to access insecure Foscam cameras via several widely-used forums. Using specialist search engines, people can narrow their results by location...
Foscam is not the only company to find itself the target of hackers. Last year, camera company Trendnet had to rush out an update to fix a security hole that left thousands of cameras exposed. (more)
This is not a new problem. Manufacturers have been slow to respond. (Security Scrapbook warnings from 2/12 and 7/13). Why?
Espionage Idea: Imagine your country is the top manufacturer of surveillance cameras. You build in a back-door capability to monitor each one, and hope no one notices. Salt the Earth with your product. Target the units placed in sensitive areas. Wow, what power! And, then some hackers blow it for you. Damn hackers.
Example
If all the sounds of the summer blockbuster "Man of Steel" were stripped away ...a light humming would still be heard. The barely audible noise is an audio watermark...
Designed by engineers at San Diego company Verance Corp., the watermark is a unique signal to Blu-ray disc players that the movie being watched was illegally recorded at a movie theater. After 20 minutes of playtime, the disc player shuts the movie down and offers the viewer the chance to continue watching—by paying for the movie through legitimate sources like Amazon.com Inc. and Netflix Inc.
...a San Diego startup, PirateEye, believes they can combat piracy using a vastly different technology.
The PirateEve camera, in theaters, can spot people recording a movie.
It installs cameras above theater screens that can detect recording devices in the audience and then send pictures of offenders to theater security.
PirateEye's camera-spotting technology was adapted from a military application that placed sensors under combat helicopters to scan the ground below for reflections from scopes on sniper rifles.
Hollywood studios provided several million dollars in investment for the company, which has also been funded by private investors. (more)
...by Brian Dodson, gizmag.com...
For the past 23 years, the IARC has challenged college teams with missions requiring complex autonomous robotic behaviors that are often beyond the capabilities of even the most sophisticated military robots. This year's competition, which was held in China and the United States over the past week, saw the team from Tsinghua University in Beijing successfully complete the current mission – an elaborate espionage operation known as Mission Six.
First proposed in 2010, the Mission Six scenario is that an enemy has plans for taking control of the Eurasian banking system, a move that could throw the entire world into chaos. This plan is contained in a USB flash drive located in a remote security office of the enemy's intelligence organization.
The target building has a broken window on the same floor as the security office...and is equipped with laser intrusion detectors, floor sensors, video surveillance, and periodic patrols. Mission Six calls for covertly capturing the flash drive, and replacing it with another of the same make to postpone discovery of the theft... The mission must be carried out within ten minutes to avoid security patrols.
The vehicles are required to be completely autonomous, with no external commands accepted during the mission. The vehicles can be of any type (as long as they fly)...
All vehicles must contain their own power supplies. The vehicle is required to sense its immediate surroundings, and decide on its own actions, but need not contain its control computer – it can instead be linked to an external computer by radio. While external navigation aids are allowed, GPS locating is not.
...the Michigan Autonomous Aerial Vehicles team, associated with the University of Michigan, had been touted as the most likely entry at the American venue to succeed with Mission Six. Unfortunately, they encountered a perfect storm of equipment malfunctions, and were unable to complete the mission. (more)
FutureWatch - Just as piloted fighter planes are being replaced by unmanned drones, spies keep themselves out of harm's way using technology too. Bugs, wiretaps, spyware, and now robots will also be doing the dirty work in the future. Imagine, armies of robo-roaches scanning all the paperwork left out overnight, and perhaps planting themselves as audio / visual bugs.
A new system allows researchers to track up to three separate people through a wall, solely with the help of low-power Wi-Fi signals.
The Wi-Vi system relies on two antennas to broadcast Wi-Fi signals and a receiver to read them, according to the researchers’ paper. The Wi-Fi signals degrade in quality each time they pass through a wall, so the receiver must be prepared to pick up on very weak signals. It is also quickly overwhelmed if there are too many to sort through...
Researchers think the Wi-Vi system could also be used to find survivors in destroyed buildings or count and track criminals. Compared to previous military-oriented tracking systems, Wi-Vi is cheap, compact and lightweight, which makes it practical for consumer uses such as personal safety. (more)
A short interview (10:17) on the BBC...
(audio - available until 7/7/13)
To make a Harry Potter-style invisibility cloak requires the use of materials that have what's known as a negative refractive index over all optical wavelengths, from red to violet.
 |
| You don't see yourself. |
However, the artificially-structured optical materials from which cloaks are made thus far have been restricted to a very narrow range of optical wavelengths, limiting their ability to cloak over a range of colors.
That obstacle to progress looks to be at an end, as a group of optical engineers at Stanford has succeeded in designing a broadband metamaterial that exhibits a negative refractive index over nearly the entire rainbow...
The broad bandwidth of the new Stanford metamaterial suggests that this new class of materials will one day allow the fabrication of invisibility cloaks that are truly invisible, at least to the human eye. Beyond this, the extraordinary freedom to control light with metamaterials is likely to lead to hordes of applications never previously imagined. (more) (original paper) (lab-shirt) (How to hide a bug from an IR viewer.)
Imagine the impact on eavesdropping and spying.
A Princeton University team has successfully merged electronics and biology to create a functional ear that can “hear” radio frequencies. The tissue and antenna were merged via the use of an “off-the -shelf” 3D printer, and the results have the potential to not only restore but actually enhance human hearing in the future...
The ear itself consists of a coiled antenna within a cartilage structure, with two wires leading from the base and winding around the helical “cochlea” – the area of the ear that senses sound. The signal registered by the antenna could be connected to a patient's nerve endings in a similar way to a hearing aid, restoring and improving their ability to hear. (more & more)
