Using Drones for Peeping, Burglaries on Rise: “It’s Gotten Dramatically Worse”

It's attack of the drones as flying cameras stalk stars and serve as burglary lookouts, all while becoming tougher to detect. But security companies are offering high-tech solutions...

Illicit drone use has not only continued despite states passing strict laws but in recent years has proliferated, says Mike Fraietta, an FAA drone pilot and founder of security company Gargoyle Systems. Drone security systems are on the rise as companies and event producers look to secure their airspace. Professional, military-grade drone-detection systems — the kind used for sporting events, for instance — can cost about $200,000...

Drones are typically detected by their noise or the radio frequency (RF) an operator uses to pilot the craft. Fraietta says the technology is innovating in three ways: using AI to program portions of a preplanned flight path instead of relying on RF, making drone wings quieter, and using a wire like a kite string. “A tethered drone sounds silly at first,” he says. “But they’re fiber optic wires that also allow for 4K streaming, and the drone is not detectable by the police looking for a radio frequency. So they’re able to get away and move drones a lot quicker and quieter than a year ago.” Such teathers can literally be miles long. more

This Week in Spy News

• US citizen sentenced to 15 years by Moscow court on espionage charges, Russian media says

• A 9th telecoms firm has been hit by a massive Chinese espionage campaign, the White House says

• Aerial and Drone Surveillance: 2024 in Review
  

• EFF Wins Legal Battle Over Police License Plate Reader Data Sharing in 2024

• Documents Found After the Fall of Assad Show Syrian Intelligence Spying on Journalists

• Frying or spying? These air fryers may be harvesting your data, experts say

• At last MI5 sees the funny side of spying

• Chinese spies arrested in California

Canadian Coach Implicated in Drone-Spying Scandal Resigns Abruptly

John Herdman, the former Canada coach who was implicated in the drone-spying scandal, has abruptly resigned as manager of MLS side Toronto FC.

His reputation has been tarnished somewhat after he was caught up in the investigation into a Canada Soccer staffer spying on their New Zealand opponents with a drone at the 2024 Paris Olympics. The scandal saw head coach Bev Priestman, assistant coach Jasmine Mander and analyst Joey Lombardi all handed a one-year FIFA ban.Emma Hayes fulfills national anthem promise before USWNT vs. England friendly.

Herman denied any wrongdoing in the scandal given his previous role as head coach. He declined to publicly address allegations of a link to a culture of spying within Canada Soccer but maintained his record was clean at the Olympics and World Cups. more

Olympics: FIFA Hinders Canada’s chances with Punishments for Drone Spying

FIFA suspended Canada women’s soccer coach Bev Priestman for one year, deducted six points from the team’s Olympic group stage total and issued a fine on Saturday in response to Canada flying a drone over New Zealand’s training sessions before the start of the Games.

The punishment immediately and severely hurt the chances for a second consecutive gold medal for Canada, which won the Olympic tournament in Tokyo in 2021, a run that was immediately questioned as the drone scandal emerged. more

THOR: Disables Drone Swarm Attacks

The Department of Defense is exploring options to protect our warfighters further. Enter THOR, stage right. Tactical, High-power, Operational Responder (THOR), is a high-power microwave counter-drone weapon that the Air Force Research Lab has demonstrated for effective use against realistic targets. Watch this video to see how THOR tracks and turns off entire drone swarms. video

New Wireless Eavesdropping Vulnerability - Beam Deflection

A research team led by Rice University’s, Edward Knightly, has uncovered an eavesdropping security vulnerability in high-frequency and high-speed wireless backhaul links, widely employed in critical applications such as 5G wireless cell phone signals and low-latency financial trading on Wall Street.

Contrary to the common belief that these links are inherently secure due to their elevated positioning and highly directive millimeter-wave and sub-terahertz “pencil-beams,” the team exposed a novel method of interception using a metasurface-equipped drone dubbed MetaFly. Their findings were published by the world’s premier security conference, IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, in May 2024.

“The implications of our research are far-reaching, potentially affecting a broad spectrum of companies, government agencies and individuals relying on these links,” said Knightly, the Sheafor-Lindsay Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and professor of computer science. more

Chinese Drone Photographer Charged Under US Espionage Act

While on leave from his graduate studies at the University of Minnesota, Fengyun Shi flew to Virginia on January 5, 2024. While in Virginia, he rented a car and drove to a shipyard where United States military personnel build nuclear submarines. 

An affidavit filed later in January by FBI special agent Sara Shalowitz claims that a shipyard security officer saw Shi and told the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. Shalowitz alleges that on January 6, Shi was flying his drone in poor conditions, and it got stuck in a tree on a neighboring property.

Shi approached the property owner, requesting help retrieving his drone...The unnamed individual captured images of Shi, his rental car’s license plate, and Shi’s identification. They then called the police.

When law enforcement arrived on the scene, Shi was understandably “very nervous,” and failed to provide a reasonable explanation for why he was there and flying a drone. The police explained to Shi that the fire department would need to retrieve the drone and that Shi should stay there until they arrived. Instead, Shi left the area entirely, abandoning his drone in the process. more

CISA & FBI Release Chinese Drone Awareness Paper

Cybersecurity Guidance: Chinese-Manufactured UAS is a Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) resource that raises awareness on the threats posed by Chinese-manufactured UAS and provides UAS cybersecurity recommendations that reduce risks to networks and sensitive information. This guidance also provides additional resources to augment an organization’s preparedness, response, and resilience.

"The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has enacted laws that provide the government with expanded legal grounds for accessing and controlling data held by firms in China. The use of Chinese-manufactured UAS in critical infrastructure operations risks exposing sensitive information to PRC authorities."  more  / download

Recent Spy News

• A Russian man working for a state firm was arrested for allegedly planning to pass sensitive information to Poland in exchange for help in fleeing the country, the security services said Friday. Russian security services have detained a slew of foreigners and its own nationals for working with foreign intelligence since it launched the conflict in Ukraine in February 2022. more

• Algeria caught up in spying drama on the eve of Africa Cup of Nations as police quiz man who flew a DRONE over their training session more

• The sentencing of a US Navy sailor is a window into Chinese espionage. more

• In a decision reflecting rising espionage concerns and a penchant for time-tested technologies, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has chosen to keep alive the chancellery’s vintage pneumatic tube system. 

This unconventional yet highly functional method of document distribution, planned for phase-out by 2025, has been given a new lease of life. more  However: Researchers have found almost a dozen vulnerabilities in a popular brand of pneumatic tube delivery system more  Fun video clip.

• Belarusian Spy-Nude Model Detained in Poland - Polish state security services arrested a Belarusian OnlyFans model for allegedly engaging in espionage – something that she had admitted to friends while drunk. more

• 20 Best Spy Comedies – From 'Austin Powers' to 'Spies Like Us,' Moviefone counts down the 20 best spy comedies of all time. more

World Spy News Roundup

PA - A Pittsburgh police commander previously placed on leave while officials investigated allegations he spied on colleagues has retired. Matthew Lackner, who had previously overseen the police bureau’s Zone 2 station in the Hill District, retired Tuesday, according to spokeswoman Cara Cruz. Mr. Lackner was placed on paid administrative leave earlier this month. A police source familiar with the incident said the commander was accused of putting a body-worn camera in an officer’s patrol vehicle to spy on the officer. more

Australia - Robot vacuums don’t just collect dust — they can also collect data of their surroundings, sending it back to external servers, experts at The Australian Information Security Association (AISA) warned on Tuesday. more

China - China restricts foreign travel by bankers, state workers to curb spying... According to two analysts who spoke to the media, the moves reflect President Xi Jinping’s attention to national security in the midst of tense relations with the West. more

CA - The Five Eyes countries' intelligence chiefs came together on Tuesday to accuse China of intellectual property theft and using artificial intelligence for hacking and spying against the nations, in a rare joint statement by the allies. more

TX - It seems everything truly is bigger here in Texas, including the drama of partner snooping and infidelity! Recent data has exposed Texas as one of the leading states where the lines between privacy and suspicion are blurrier than ever. Relationship and sex expert Beth Darling joins the factor to talk about the data. more

USA - Ethical hacker helps prevent a potential espionage disaster for CIA. A glitch on X, formerly known as Twitter, could have opened a can of worms for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had an ethical hacker on the microblogging website not sprung to action. more

Donald Trump is suing a private investigations firm over "shocking and scandalous" claims that he engaged in "perverted sexual acts" in Russia. The former US president is taking legal action against Orbis Business Intelligence, a London-based company co-founded by ex-British spy Christopher Steele, over a dossier containing rumours about him that caused a storm before his 2017 presidential inauguration. more

Survey - 53% of employees in the Middle East, Turkiye, and Africa region fear spying from drones... Corporate spies and hackers use drones to get trade secrets, confidential information, and other sensitive data from corporations and data centers. A drone can carry a device for hacking into corporate networks – for instance, a smartphone, a compact computer (e.g., Raspberry Pi), or a signal interceptor (e.g., Wi-Fi Pineapple [1]), and hackers use these devices to access corporate data and disrupt communications. All wireless communication (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, RFID, etc.) is vulnerable to drone attacks. more

Finland - Dead man's estate and firm fined €5m in shipyard espionage case. A man who worked for the Meyer Turku shipyard copied files from the shipyard and a shipping company onto a hard drive and transferred them to his own consulting firm – but then died while the investigation was underway. more

VA - It could be years before Appian, a software company, sees a dollar of the $2 billion judgment it was awarded last year in a corporate espionage case against rival Pegasystems. more

IN - Parents Attack Little League Umpire after children say he was taking photos of them in bathroom. A Little League umpire is facing charges for allegedly taking photos of children in the bathroom... Deputies in Warrick County said they were called to an area baseball field because of reports that parents were fighting an umpire. Authorities said the parents told them the brawl started because their children came running out of the bathroom screaming that Custer had taken photos of them. more

Fine... Feathered Drones Now

Boffins create drone that flies exactly like a bird to blend in on spying missions. 

This drone flies exactly like a bird so it blends in on spying missions. The wing-flapping robot mimics the natural flight of its feathered counterparts. The Icelandic company behind it, said it could be for military or private use. Silent Flyer UAV went on display during the DroneX expo at East London’s ExCel centre. It is designed by Icelandic company Flygildi.

Earlier this year we revealed creepily realistic drones made from dead birds were being developed by scientists. more

Man Arrested for Spying on Woman with Drone

RI - The Cranston Police Department announced a convicted sex offender was arrested for spying on a woman through her bathroom window with a drone...

Officials said the woman victim...was preparing to use the shower when she heard a buzzing noise from outside. The woman went to her back yard thinking the sound had something to do with her pool when she noticed a drone hovering outside her bathroom window. When the victim approached the drone, she said it moved quickly in an attempt to get away from her when it crashed into a tree and hit the ground...the victim disabled the drone in her pool and called 911 shortly after. more

A Tale of High-Stakes Corporate Espionage... a cautionary tale.

When Chinese tech giant Huawei learned it was set to lose a $200 million contract, a run-of-the-mill equipment deal spiraled into a saga of hidden microphones, drone encounters and covert surveillance, according to investigators for a Danish telecoms firm. Bloomberg reporters crisscrossed Copenhagen for the tale of TDC’s 5G showdown, in which technology, business and national security collide. more

No business is immune. Help is available. Click here. 

Florida Grounds Drones over Fears of Spying

Police, fire and other government agencies across Florida must ground millions of dollars in aerial drones because of a new state rule banning the agencies from using devices made by China-based DJI. 

The DJI drones are among the most widely used in the world, but Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration said they pose a security threat and did not include them on a list of approved drone manufacturers. more

Arizona Bill to Make Drone Spying a Crime Moves Forward

AZ - State lawmakers are moving to ensure people don’t get too nosy with their new drones.

In a party-line vote on Wednesday, members of the House Commerce Committee approved legislation that would make it a criminal offense to intentionally photograph, tape or otherwise observe someone else in a private place where that person has a “reasonable expectation of privacy.”

The only thing is that there hasn’t been a consensus as to when exactly someone crosses that line. more

Russian Spy Plane Destroyed With Help of Toy Store Drone

Pro-Ukrainian pilots flew a drone they bought from a typical consumer store onto a $328 million Russian spy plane that was later destroyed. 

Remarkable footage shows the drone casually arriving at Machulishchy air base near Minsk, Belarus, and landing on the Beriev A-50 spy plane that’s equipped with a special radar attached to the fuselage.

The flight was reportedly carried out by Belarusian anti-government activists, although it’s unclear whether the shop-bought drone was carrying explosives or if it was used to target the plane for a subsequent attack. more

The Lasers are Coming - Killer Eyeglasses & Drones

For years, movies have teased us with the possibilities of augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR), from Minority Report to Iron Man. But unlike robotic insects and flying suits, AR and MR smart glasses are much closer to reality for everyday consumers. One of the major barriers has been consumers’ desire for lightweight smart glasses that resemble standard eyeglasses and can be worn all day, every day. Compact, chic designs require projection technology and batteries that are as small and power-efficient as possible, which has been difficult to achieve. The internet hype that AR glasses are just around the corner has given into the reality that there are a number of large problems to solve before mass deployment in the consumer space can begin. more

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Aerial drones are essentially the new improvised explosive devices (IEDs)—they’re relatively cheap and easily weaponized. Weaponized swarms of drones working together on a mission are an asymmetric threat that can quickly turn into an ugly situation. In the future, drones are expected to become faster, more autonomous, more difficult to detect or jam, and deadlier, with more sophisticated swarm attacks.

An arms race of sorts is quietly underway to be able to counter any countermeasures against drones. So the U.S. military is adopting a multilayered counter-drone approach to deal primarily with small drones (classified as Groups 1 and 2)—including commercial ones you can easily buy online and ones with fixed wings that look like tiny airplanes. Pinpoint accuracy at the speed of light makes high-energy lasers, a form of directed energy, one of the most promising options. more

The CIA Renovated its Museum...

... The public still can’t go see it.

The CIA Museum covers the intelligence agency’s long history — from spying on the Soviets to the Argo mission in Iran — but the latest addition is practically ripped from the headlines: a model of Ayman al-Zawahiri’s compound in Kabul used weeks ago to plan the U.S. drone strike that killed the al-Qaeda leader.

The model is part of the newly renovated exhibition hall located deep inside CIA headquarters in Langley, Va. Like the NSA’s Wall of Spies museum in Bethesda, Md., the CIA Museum isn’t open to the public. But it’s not exactly top secret either, welcoming CIA employees, official guests, foreign partners, potential recruits — and, early on a Saturday morning, a handful of carefully observed journalists, including reporters with old-school notepads and pens (electronics are banned).

There are plenty of fun gadgets to see, like a polygraph machine in a briefcase and a communication device disguised as a tobacco pipe, used in the 1960s. When a user bit down on the pipe, sound traveled through their teeth and jawbone to the ear canal, allowing them to hear messages that no one around them could. 

But many of the items displayed — the pigeon camera, the fake dead rat used for “dead drops” — can also be found across the river at the International Spy Museum. more

Allow me to sneak you in the back door.

Drone Zapper – 40 in one blow!

Aerial drones are essentially the new improvised explosive devices (IEDs)—they’re relatively cheap and easily weaponized. Weaponized swarms of drones working together on a mission are an asymmetric threat that can quickly turn into an ugly situation...

An arms race of sorts is quietly underway to be able to counter any countermeasures against drones...

The U.S. Air Force deployed Raytheon Intelligence & Space’s first high-energy laser weapon system (HELWS) overseas...

HELWS is a 15-kW-class laser weapon system that fires a silent near-infrared beam of light to shoot down a drone or deliver what’s known as a “hard kill” within the defense realm. It’s capable of taking out at least 40 drones coming at it, and has a fairly long (yet undisclosed) range. more

Weird, Unusual & Interesting - Spy News Clickbait

Venice, Italy - The city’s leaders are acquiring the cellphone data of unwitting tourists and using hundreds of surveillance cameras to monitor visitors and prevent crowding. Next summer, they plan to install long-debated gates at key entry points; visitors coming only for the day will have to book ahead and pay a fee to enter. If too many people want to come, some will be turned away. more

Banksy's Spy Booth Brick + NFT Auction Crashes Servers with Overwhelmingly Heavy Web Traffic more

Australia - An ABC News drone took the brunt of the bite force when a saltwater crocodile leapt up and plucked it from mid-air while filming in Darwin. video

Top 9 Surveillance Videos of the Week video  

How Jamie Spears Spied on Britney Spears Through iCloud - A security firm spied on Britney Spears through her iCloud account. Here's how to figure out if someone is doing that to you, and how to stop it. more & more & more & bugsweep

ShadowDragon: Inside the Social Media Surveillance Software That Can Watch Your Every Move - The tool is the product of a growing industry whose work is usually kept from the public and utilized by police. more & more

Florida - New Law – Corporate Espionage (HB 1523): Sponsored by Republican Rep. Mike Beltran, the new law creates the crime of “trafficking in trade secrets” and enhances criminal penalties under certain circumstances. If the trafficking of trade secrets benefits a foreign government or company, the offense is now a first-degree felony. more

Florida - Surveillance Drone Assists in Search for Brian Laundrie more 

Security researchers think Amazon's Astro bot isn't safe. more