Optical Spying Through Office Windows

With talented hackers able to break into just about any device that's connected to the internet, from a computer to a car, the best way to keep sensitive data safe is to cut the cord completely.

Keeping an "air gap" between a hard drive and other devices forces any would-be thief to physically go to the machine ... or so you might think. Cyber security researchers have shown that hackers could hijack the innocent flashing LED on the outside of a computer, and use it to beam a steady stream of data to a waiting drone.

...digital criminals can be extremely crafty, using acoustic signals to jump the air gap between devices from a distance or untangling typed text by listening via Skype to the clickety-clack of a keyboard.

Now, a team at the Ben-Gurion University Cyber Security Research Center has demonstrated a new way that creative crooks could crack that isolated data. A piece of malware infecting an air-gapped computer could harness the hard drive's LED, making it flash in a very controlled and very fast manner. Flickering thousands of times a second, the virus could blink out a binary code of the desired data, at a rate that a human sitting at that computer wouldn't even notice. Special cameras or light sensors – say from a drone hovering at the window, with a line of sight to the LED – could then receive and record that information. more

Spybusters Tip #792: External visual surveillance through windows is easy using high-powered optics, or even cameras on drones. Keep computer screens, and their blinky lights, away from external line-of-sight. 

Spybusters Tip #793: Enforce a "Clear Desk Policy" when sensitive information is not actively being used. ~Kevin

Flying Tom's Last Peep

UAE - A 28-year-old man died after falling from a high rise building in Sharjah, in the United Arab Emirates, 
while spying on ladies living in the opposite building. The witness told police that the deceased fell due to imbalance while standing and looking into the rooms of the ladies.

Sharjah Police said that they received a call about the incident at the operation room and soon arrived at the site. The man was found dead in a pool of blood. He was rushed to Al Kuwaiti Hospital and then to forensic laboratory. more

Business Espionage Problem: Car Spy Photographers Using Drones

...automakers are looking at ways to put a stop to this practice.

Click to enlarge.

One answer may be coming from the German company Deutsche Telekom, which is working with developers on ways to keep drones out of certain areas.

The American company Dedrone also has a DroneTracker system that can locate drones more than half a mile away. We're sure that more creative and interesting means of inhibiting drones are coming down the road as well. more

Bird, James Bird - Suspected of Fowl Play

The Indian police on Saturday detained another pigeon that flew into a village near the heavily militarised border with Pakistan on a suspicion of 'spy'. 

The state intelligence and army officers were inspecting the pigeon that might have flown across border from Pakistan and landed in Punjab's Hoshiarpur district with some words in Urdu inscribed on its wings.

The bird was handed over to police by a local Naresh Kumar who spotted some 'suspicious text' on the wings which were actually names of the week days. The pigeon was X-rayed to verify if something was hidden inside but no clues were discovered having any links with Pakistan.

It is pertinent to mention here that in 2015, Indian authorities had captured a pigeon which was claimed to be a 'spy' pigeon from Pakistan. In 2013, Indian security forces found a dead falcon fitted with a small camera, and in 2010 another pigeon was detained over espionage fears. more

Eye in Sky Surveillance - “Imagine Google Earth with TiVo capability.”

Baltimore, MD - Since January, police have been testing an aerial surveillance system adapted from the surge in Iraq.

[See excellent video report.]

A half block from the city’s central police station, in a spare office suite above a parking garage, Ross McNutt, the founder of Persistent Surveillance Systems, monitored the city...

Since this discreet arrangement began in January, it had felt like a make-or-break opportunity for McNutt. His company had been trying for years to snag a long-term contract with an American metropolitan police department. Baltimore seemed like his best shot to date, one that could lead to more work.

He’s told police departments that his system might help them reduce crime by as much as 20 percent in their cities, and he was hoping this Baltimore job would allow him to back up the claim. “I don’t have good statistical data yet, but that’s part of the reason we’re here,” he said. McNutt believes the technology would be most effective if used in a transparent, publicly acknowledged manner; part of the system’s effectiveness, he said, rests in its potential to deter criminal activity.

McNutt is an Air Force Academy graduate, physicist, and MIT-trained astronautical engineer who in 2004 founded the Air Force’s Center for Rapid Product Development. The Pentagon asked him if he could develop something to figure out who was planting the roadside bombs that were killing and maiming American soldiers in Iraq. In 2006 he gave the military Angel Fire, a wide-area, live-feed surveillance system that could cast an unblinking eye on an entire city.

The system was built around an assembly of four to six commercially available industrial imaging cameras, synchronized and positioned at different angles, then attached to the bottom of a plane. As the plane flew, computers stabilized the images from the cameras, stitched them together and transmitted them to the ground at a rate of one per second. This produced a searchable, constantly updating photographic map that was stored on hard drives. His elevator pitch was irresistible: “Imagine Google Earth with TiVo capability.” more more videos

Amateur Skygazers Have Already Found the New Spy Satellite

Last week, the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office launched NROL-37, carrying its latest spy satellite into geosynchronous orbit via Delta IV-Heavy rocket. But it only took amateur space enthusiasts a few days to locate the mysterious new craft in the skies near Malaysia, over the Strait of Malacca.

While the contents and capabilities of the NROL-37 mission's payload are classified (the satellite is innocuously labeled US-268), its need to hitch a ride on the world's biggest rocket strongly suggests it is the seventh member of the Mentor/Orion family, an extra-large class of signals intelligence (SIGINT) satellites which help provide eavesdropping capability to US intelligence agencies.



Their large size also makes Mentor satellites the easiest to find and photograph. In a blog post, Dr. Marco Langbroek details how he and two other amateur skygazers found the Mentor-7 satellite near 104 E longitude over the course of a few days using standard photographic equipment. (You can always spot a geosynchronous satellite by taking long exposures of the sky at night and noting which “stars” aren’t moving.) more

Police Training Eagles to Intercept Drones

UK - The Metropolitan Police has confirmed it is considering using eagles to capture unauthorised remote controlled drones following a successful trial by Dutch police... 

A 2014 inquiry led by Sir David Omand, the former head of intelligence agency GCHQ, highlighted the serious risks posed by the devices. "Crowds at sporting events or rallies could be vulnerable if a future terrorist group were to look for means of dispersing chemical or biological agents," the report said.

Dutch police teamed up with Guard From Above, a raptor-training security firm, to teach the birds how to hunt and intercept drones. "It's a low-tech solution to a high-tech problem," Dennis Janus, a spokesman for the Netherlands' national police, said. more

Star Wars: Episode VIII - Drones to Create No-Spy Zone

Disney and Lucasfilm are reportedly utilizing drones to ensure spying doesn't happen during filming of Star Wars: Episode VIII in Croatia.

Artist's conception.

Making Star Wars (via MosCroatia) reports there is a Star Wars team that will go to drone warfare with people using drones to get pictures of the set and cast of Episode VIII. And that's on top of apparently 600 guards.

Star Wars: Episode VIII has already begun filming, with the movie premiering December 15, 2017. more

New Law to Prevent Drone Industrial Espionage

TX - With plants and refineries fearful of safety and espionage threats posed by drones, a Southeast Texas congressman wants strict new guidelines for operating un-monitored aircraft near those facilities.

U.S. Rep. Brian Babin has offered two amendments to the Aviation Innovation, Reform and Reauthorization Act to address a mounting security concern and help safeguard chemical facilities, representatives with American Chemistry Council said Friday.

The U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee unanimously approved the amendments this week.

More than 50 large chemical plants in Jefferson, Orange and Hardin counties risk exposure of trade secrets, though no cases have been reported by law enforcement officials.

The unease is based on a concern that freelancers will take aerial photos at plant sites and try to sell them to competitors, John Durkay, legal counsel for Southeast Texas Plant Managers Forum said previously.

Durkay called the drone business "a tremendous opportunity for industrial espionage," which he said facilities worry about. more with video

Spies Accused of Winging It, or A Very Sordid Sortie

Israel Nature and Parks Authority officials are pleading for the release of a vulture after residents of a southern Lebanese town captured the bird, claiming it was being used for spying. 

Lebanese media reported that the bird – allegedly carrying Israeli spy equipment -- was caught Tuesday to prevent it from attacking citizens in the town of Bint Jbail, according to the Jerusalem Post...

Israeli officials said the bird was released in the Gamla Nature Reserve about a month ago after arriving from Spain in 2015. The bird, outfitted with a transmitter, was brought to Israel in hopes to increase its local population, the officials added. more

P.S. They came to their senses and released the vulture.

Et tu Earhart?

A new book about Amelia Earhart contains the controversial claim that she wasn’t really killed when her plane crashed in the middle of the Pacific in 1937 but instead was taken prisoner by the Japanese as a spy...

...she and navigator Fred Noonan vanished without a trace during an attempt to circumnavigate the globe.

What happened to the duo and their twin-engine aircraft during the round-the-world bid has remained one of aviation’s enduring mysteries.

 

Now ‘Amelia Earhart: Beyond the Grave,’ by WC Jameson, which is published tomorrow, January 5, makes the controversial claim that Earhart was actually sent to the South Pacific on a surveillance operation that had been authorized by United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Mr Jameson claims that her plane was fitted with cameras with which to film Japanese military outposts and that she was actually shot down and taken prisoner.

He also claims that she was released in 1945 and returned to the United States under an assumed identity.

This flies in the face of the long-standing official theory that the pair ran out of fuel and crash landed in the middle of the Pacific Ocean near Howland Island. more

U-2 Spy Plane Teardown

via Brandon Turkus
Aircraft maintenance is no laughing matter. Keeping planes, especially multi-million-dollar spy planes, in the air requires loads of work. Like many military aircraft, the U-2 spy plane gets a complete and total disassembly, a thorough inspection of all its parts, and in the case of the Dragon Lady, a complete repainting.

Sploid has an awesome time-lapse video of the process, which is handled every 4,700 flight hours by Lockheed Martin technicians. The video shows everything from the roll in to the post-maintenance takeoff, with the breakdown of parts, stripping of paint and the general inspection shown in a decent degree of detail. What we find most fascinating, though, is the way the entire plane seems to come apart like a giant Lego assembly. The wings and tail just sort of pop off, leaving the surprisingly tiny fuselage to be inspected.



Following the inspection and reassembly, the U-2 is returned to the Air Force where it can conduct its usual spying and reconnaissance operations. more

FBI Investigates Drone Crash Outside NJ Refinery

Industrial espionage, terrorists, or innocent hobbyist? You decide.

The FBI and local police are investigating after a drone fell out of the sky and crashed into a truck in New Jersey on Wednesday morning.

As CBS2’s Christine Sloan reported, of particular concern to authorities is that the incident happened on a road just outside a Phillips 66 refinery in Linden.

The driver of the truck apparently got out and had words with the operator of the drone, who took off, investigators said.
John Victor Jacobson, head of New Jersey-based Drone Service Systems, said he cannot think of a good reason to fly one of these air crafts in such a sensitive area. more

This location is also very close to Newark Airport, to the South of its runway flight path. 

Police vs Spy Blimp in PA - Shotguns Preveil

PA - State police used shotguns Thursday to deflate a wayward military surveillance blimp that broke loose in Maryland and floated for hours before coming down into trees in the Pennsylvania countryside.

Curious residents trickled into a staging area as the military began gathering up some 6,000 feet of tether, the blimp’s huge hull and a smaller tail piece, a process expected to take at least through Friday.

The white behemoth still had helium in its nose when it went down in a steep ravine on Wednesday afternoon, and the easiest way to drain the gas was to shoot it, U.S. Army Captain Matthew Villa said. State police troopers peppered the blimp with about 100 shots. more How it all started.

Spies in Space: The Final Frontier in Espionage

Space, the ‘final frontier’, is rapidly becoming an extra-terrestrial battleground for corporate espionage and other types of cyber attack as hackers seek to gain commercial advantage from rival networks operating in the $330-billion space economy...

The amount of data now being beamed between satellites supporting commercial networks on earth is growing rapidly, making them a ripe target for cyber attacks, said Luca del Monte, a senior strategist at the European Space Agency, and one of many experts who attended the annual International Astronautical Congress last week in Israel.

Space presents a double opportunity for hackers – the hardware up in orbit and the information it transmits. more

Corporate Espionage that Flies Below the Radar

by Kevin G. Coleman, SilverRhino
Headlines about economic, corporate and industrial espionage have been in abundance lately and for good reason... Several subject matter experts agree that much of these espionage activities that target businesses are criminal-based.

Recently while on the executive floor of one large company a new twist to espionage tradecraft popped up.

Drone at office window story.

After entering a conference room, a note on the whiteboard caught my attention: “DO NOT ERASE.” Seeing that on a whiteboard filled with financial numbers, notes, diagrams and so on is not an uncommon occurrence. When I was looking out the windows, I saw a drone slowly fly by. Given the camera capabilities that are now available and becoming common on drones, it would not be difficult to capture what was on those whiteboards. The images are digitally captured, cropped, enhanced extracted and then sold...

Today economic, corporate and industrial espionage is big business. With significant money being made selling corporate secrets, this threat will only grow. more

Phone on Drone Hacks Wireless Printer

You might think that working on a secured floor in a 30-story office tower puts you out of reach of Wi-Fi hackers out to steal your confidential documents.

But researchers in Singapore have demonstrated how attackers using a drone plus a mobile phone could easily intercept documents sent to a seemingly inaccessible Wi-Fi printer. The method they devised is actually intended to help organizations determine cheaply and easily if they have vulnerable open Wi-Fi devices that can be accessed from the sky. But the same technique could also be used by corporate spies intent on economic espionage. more

Guy Shoots Drone To Smithereens For Spying On Sunbathing Daughter

William Merideth was arrested and charged with criminal mischief and wanton endangerment Sunday evening after shooting down an $1800 drone he claims was spying on his teenage daughter sunbathing in Hillview, KY.

“My daughter comes in and says, ‘Dad, there’s a drone out here flying,’ ” William H. Merideth told WDRB, Tuesday.

“I came out and it was down by the neighbor’s house, about 10 feet off the ground, looking under their canopy … in their back yard," Merideth said. "I went and got my shotgun and I said, ‘I’m not going to do anything unless it’s directly over my property … Within a minute or so, here it came … hovering over top of my property, and I shot it out of the sky."

Soon after Merideth shot the drone, four men showed up at his door “looking for a fight” and asked Merideth if he was “the son of a bitch that shot my drone.”



Merideth, with a 10mm Glock holstered on his hip, confirmed he had shot down the drone and told his accuser "if you cross that sidewalk onto my property, there’s going to be another shooting."
The men left, but soon after the police arrived and arrested Merideth. Though Ars Technica reports that law enforcement officials allegedly told Merideth they agreed with his actions, he was being charged due to an ordinance against discharging firearms in the city.

Though Merideth was disappointed in the law enforcement’s response to the situation, he feels “confident” his charges will be reduced or dismissed entirely. more

Three Major Chinese Airlines to Provide In-Flight WiFi Services

Three major Chinese airlines, including China Eastern Airlines, China Southern Airlines and Air China, have been approved to provide in-flight Wi-Fi services. 

China Eastern Airlines has become the first Chinese carrier to provide Wi-Fi services on both domestic and international flights... The services are expected to be offered in a month as the airline clears up several formalities ahead of the launch.

Oh, by the way...
"Through wifi access, we will offer a variety of internet services which are free for passengers. The service charges will be shared and paid by the airline and its business partners," said Zhang Chi with China Eastern Airlines.

Spybusters Tip #815 - From our "There is no free lunch" file... You might want to keep your phone in airplane mode.

Drones and Counter-Drones

As regular readers know, the Security Scrapbook follows drone development. Our Canadian Blue Blaze Irregular checks in:

Kevin, This is making a big splash in the news today out our way... Despite the relatively short flight time (it can be worked on) this would have been greatly appreciated by many of the people we’ve met. Usually they would have had great fun if it were available in their past life. Another ‘interesting’ toy. All kinds of possibilities. ~WM



And now, the drone antidote...