AT&T plans to introduce a nationwide program today that gives owners of small and medium-size businesses some of the same tools big security companies offer for monitoring employees, customers, and operations from remote locations.
Under AT&T's Remote Monitor program, a business owner could install adjustable cameras, door sensors, and other gadgets at up to five different company locations across the country.
Using a Java-enabled mobile device or a personal computer connected to the Internet, the owner would be able to view any of the images in real time, control room lighting, and track equipment temperatures remotely. All the images are recorded on digital video, which can be viewed for up to 30 days. (more) (641A)
Ireland - Two Dublin landladies have been ordered to pay damages totalling more than €115,000 to 10 students who were tenants in their house after the Circuit Court found they had kept the students under secret electronic surveillance.The students became concerned in late 2004 that their conversations and activities were being monitored when the McKennas referred to details the students had discussed in private in the house. When they raised the issue with the McKennas, the students were evicted.
Judge Gerard Griffin yesterday found that the evidence in the case left him "in no doubt whatsoever that the defendants had kept these plaintiffs under electronic surveillance."
The judge said he could not say whether it was audio or video surveillance or both, but he was concerned that yellow wires found in the house were of the international standard used for video recording.
The wires were found during a search on December 3rd, 2004, when Ms Hegarty's solicitor and a garda (police officer) were called to the house on the back of a court order. (more)
A former FBI agent who pleaded guilty Tuesday to fraudulently obtaining U.S. citizenship and then improperly accessing sensitive computer information about Hizbollah was working until about a year ago as a CIA spy assigned to Middle East operations, Newsweek has learned.
The stunning case of Nada Nadim Prouty, a 37-year-old Lebanese native who is related to a suspected Hizbollah money launderer, appears to raise a nightmarish question for U.S. intelligence agencies: Could one of the world's most notorious terrorist groups have infiltrated the U.S. government?
"I'm beginning to think it's possible that Hizbollah put a mole in our government," said Richard Clarke, the former White House counter-terrorism chief under Presidents Clinton and, until 2002, Bush. "It's mind-blowing."
(more) (755,000 Report)
Taiwan - Large-capacity hard disks often used by government agencies were found to contain Trojan horse viruses, Investigation Bureau officials warned.Portable hard discs sold locally and produced by US disk-drive manufacturer Seagate Technology have been found to carry Trojan horse viruses that automatically upload to Beijing Web sites anything the computer user saves on the hard disc, the Investigation Bureau said.Around 1,800 of the portable Maxtor hard discs, produced in Thailand, carried two Trojan horse viruses: autorun.inf and ghost.pif, the bureau under the Ministry of Justice said.The tainted portable hard disc uploads any information saved on the computer automatically and without the owner's knowledge to www.nice8.org and www.we168.org, the bureau said.The affected hard discs are Maxtor Basics 500G discs.
The bureau said that the method of attack was unusual, adding that it suspected Chinese authorities were involved.
Anyone who has purchased this kind of hard disc should return it to the place of purchase, the bureau said.
It said it had pulled 1,500 discs from shelves, while the remaining 300 had been sold by the stores to consumers. (more)
Three former Telecom Italia employees have been accused of corporate espionage targeted at Spanish giant Telefonica, Mexico's Telmex and its Brazil unit Embratel, Brazilian press reported, citing Italian weekly L'Espresso.The employees were arrested on November 5 and accused of spying on the "enemy" after forming a team referred to as the Tiger Team. The team is thought to have started the espionage in 2005 when Telefonica began talks with Telecom about possible acquisitions or alliances, according to the reports.The Telecom employees implicated are former Brasil Telecom chief of security Angelo Iannone, and IT technicians Roberto Rangoni and Alfredo Melloni, according to the reports.The reports say that the accused accessed confidential information about TEF and TMX subsidiaries in Europe and Latin America. Among the subsidiaries that were hacked are Vodafone, Embratel, Telemar and Vivo. (more)
TX - Using a computer program to spy on his estranged wife's e-mail resulted in a Texas man being sentenced to four years in prison.Shawn Macleod was sentenced in Austin, Texas, for violating wiretap laws when he used SpyRecon software to gather information on his estranged wife's Internet activity. (more)
The former director of Honduras' state-run telephone company has been charged with illegally wiretapping the president's phone conversations and authorities said Tuesday that he is a fugitive.Eight taped conversations, in which a voice that sounded like President Manuel Zelaya outlined a strategy to control the nation's news media, made their way to the popular video-sharing Internet site YouTube last month. (more)
from the seller's web site..."This attractive and pleasant potpourri basket actually contains a powerful GSM bugging device. Leave it in your chosen room and dial the number of the GSM bug - the call will connect silently after two rings and you will hear whats going on in the room ...from anywhere in the world!" (more)
Kid Rock gave props to the head of his security team, Little Bear, for "finding a hidden camera in the dressing room at the show at the Myth Nightclub" in Minneapolis on Thursday night.
"Little Bear, who runs SpyOps.net, discovered the device before the show and alerted the authorities, who are now investigating," Rock wrote.
TMZ obtained photos of the alleged spycam from Little Bear that appears to indicate it was set up to broadcast on the Internet,
but in a statement from the club released to the Star Tribune, the management explained, "The green-room camera in question is part of the venue's security aspect, available for viewing by head of security only ... Rock's allegation that there was some kind of Internet broadcast in progress is simply not true and without foundation." (more) (more)
The club's cameras appear networked; common practice these days. Having a 'green room' camera - probably common practice as well. Venue owners need to make sure their guests are safe, and have evidence if guests bust up the place.
Was the camera was viewable by unauthorized parties via the Internet? Instant answers (or accusations) are not possible. This will take a little investigation.
Did your security team check the software settings before making these pronouncements to the press, Kid? And, why isn't a confidentiality clause part of your security contract? Press statements like these make clients look silly. Call us next time ...please.
When retired U.S. Secret Service agent Gus Dimitrelos is called on to speak, the charismatic computer crimes expert tells of catching celebrity stalkers, serial killers and child predators using computer and cell phone data. ...
Among the top threats: theft of intellectual property, such as sealed bids or financial data; theft of personal information like credit card and Social Security numbers; and installation of malicious software including computer viruses that steal, corrupt or destroy data.
Whether a business is dealing with fraud or general theft, Dimitrelos said, "the biggest threat is going to come from the inside."
Finding who is responsible can get expensive. Dimitrelos, for example, charges $250 to $325 an hour. A security evaluation for a company with 700 to 1,000 or so employees can range from roughly $20,000 to $50,000, he said.
The good news is that businesses can take relatively inexpensive steps to guard against fraud. (more)
"Looking back on the appalling 21st century from our vantage point, 500 years later, it sometimes seems incredible that the human race could have survived such a time of troubles. The moment of greatest danger can now be pinpointed precisely--the year 2010.
Fifty years earlier, the chief threat seemed to be from thermonuclear weapons; however, these could be manufactured only by wealthy nations possessing both vast financial resources and a high level of technology.
Then, suddenly and totally unexpectedly, the situation was transformed by the invention of the Electromagnetic Pulse Bomb. The origin of this terrifying device is unknown: Like most concepts whose time has come, it was probably invented independently in a number of places. However, the first public account appeared in the September 2001 issue of Popular Mechanics under this dramatic headline:E-BOMB: In the blink of an eye, electromagnetic bombs could throw civilization back 200 years. And terrorists can build them for $400." (more)
Hummm... Time to buy a horses and a farm next to a river. You'll need the land for crops, horses for transportation and cultivation and water for power.
Ireland - House buyers are employing private investigators and specialist agencies to investigate their future new neighbours to check everything from whether they have criminal records to whether they are fond of throwing late-night parties. (more)
He had all-American cover: born in Iowa, college in Manhattan, Army buddies with whom he played baseball.George Koval also had a secret. During World War II, he was a top Soviet spy, code named Delmar and trained by Stalin’s ruthless bureau of military intelligence. Atomic spies are old stuff. But historians say Dr. Koval, who died in his 90s last year in Moscow and whose name is just coming to light publicly, was probably one of the most important spies of the 20th century.
On Nov. 2, the Kremlin startled Western scholars by announcing that President Vladimir V. Putin had posthumously given the highest Russian award to a Soviet agent who penetrated the Manhattan Project to build the atom bomb.
The announcement hailed Dr. Koval as “the only Soviet intelligence officer” to infiltrate the project’s secret plants, saying his work “helped speed up considerably the time it took for the Soviet Union to develop an atomic bomb of its own.” (more)
From the web site...
• "Read everything on their mobile phones."
• "Read their SMS, call logs, emails and track their locations."
• "Remote listening. Listen to the phone's surroundings."
• "BUG Meeting rooms and CHECK babysitters."
• "Protect Your Children"
• "Catch Cheating Spouses"
Your first reaction might be, "Wow, this is amazingly cool!"
But, think...
FlexiSPY and other spyphone software like Neo-Call are Internet-available products which can be installed by anyone. The target could easily be you... especially if your phone was given to you.
Employers can use it too. "How?!?!"
Those wonderful folks at FlexiSPY also make FLEXIAnalyzer Enterprise - "Log EVERYTHING that happens on your employees business phones. ...a unique analytical tool for mobile device deployments that offers intelligent knowledge based analysis, in real-time, of all corporate phone activity." In other words, your boss can, "Monitor SMS, MMS, Email and other phone events..."
But wait! (Here comes the cruelest Ginsu knife cut of all...) "If required FlexiANALYZER comes bundled with FlexiSYNC enabling secure archiving and retrieval of all corporate contact lists..." Keep your little black book off your corporate cell phone.
Germany is the land of ideas and innovations. Yet it is not only business competitors who may try to gain secret access to German expertise, it is also foreign intelligence services that are spying on German companies.
Whether it's research results, strategies for development, product information, client data or budget plans -- business secrets of successful companies are increasingly becoming coveted by industrious spies.
Andreas Blume, who is responsible for protecting new scientific findings at the chemicals company Evonik-Degussa, said small and mid-sized companies that are leaders in their field are especially at risk.
...some of the tricks the intelligence services use: supposed document shredders that are actually equipped with internal shredders and UMTS transmitters, beamers that record presentations and USB sticks with so-called Trojan Horse programs that allow hackers to spy on computers. ... A company in Thailand, for instance, offers monitoring of cell phone conversations. (more)
We hear this complaint from corporations in other countries, as well.
AT&T plans to introduce a nationwide program today that gives owners of small and medium-size businesses some of the same tools big security companies offer for monitoring employees, customers, and operations from remote locations. 
