NIST revises guidance for remote access and teleworking security

NIST is revising its "Guide to Enterprise Telework and Remote Access Security," which was first published in 2002. A draft of Special Publication 800-46 Revision 1 has been released for public comment. It is intended to help organizations understand and mitigate the risks of teleworking, emphasizing the importance of securing sensitive information stored on telework devices and transmitted across external networks. The draft also provides recommendations for selecting, implementing, and maintaining the necessary security controls. (more)

SpyCam Story #519 - Bay City Troller

MI - Brandon D. King of Bay City, who was convicted of videotaping a woman changing clothes inside a Target fitting room, is serving three months of electronic monitoring for violating probation.

...initially sentenced King to three years of probation for using an eavesdropping device to watch the 24-year-old woman, clad in undergarments, try on a pair of shorts June 12, 2007, at the store, 2272 Tittabawassee, Kochville Township.

Sheriff's deputies said the victim was changing clothes when she noticed a pair of hands holding a Sony video camera under the wall. (more)

Vienna, one of the spy capitals of the world

Twenty years after the end of the Cold War, Vienna remains a spy haven, swarming with foreign agents who think nothing of killing in broad daylight, while the Austrian authorities turn a blind eye, experts say.

Vienna formed the backdrop to Orson Welles's legendary spy thriller "The Third Man" in 1949, but even today it remains a hive of secret service activity.

"Austria is still a favourite place for agents. They're frequently known to the authorities, but rarely hindered. Everything is handled courteously and diplomatically. There's a long tradition in that," said Siegfried Beer, director of the Austrian Centre for Intelligence, Propaganda and Security Studies (ACIPSS), at the University of Graz. (more)

Kelly Monroe Turner’s extraordinary eavesdropping device

At 1:07 a.m. on the morning of Oct. 1, 1910, the walls of the Los Angeles Times building succumbed to a immense explosion.

Men, mortar and equipment were dispersed into the night air and a fire erupted. When the dust eventually settled, 21 newspaper employees were dead and 100 others were injured, many seriously.

Newspapers called the tragedy “the crime of the century.”

William J. “Billy” Burns, famed anti-union private detective, was hired to solve the crime...
Burns’ investigation of the dynamiting brought national notoriety to three Terre Haute men: Eugene V. Debs, Frank P. Fox and Kelly Monroe Turner...

The March 30, 1912 issue of “Scientific American” and the Science and Invention section of the June 15, 1912 issue of “The Literary Digest” contained lengthy articles describing Turner’s invention and its use in the case... (Burns extensive use of Dictograph equipment later led to him being investigated for wiretapping.)

Turner, a native of Pimento and later a Terre Haute, Indiana resident, invented the dictograph, an eavesdropping device that “solved the crime” in December 1911 and sent John J. and James B. McNamara, represented by legendary Clarence Darrow, to prison. Placed in the McNamaras’ jail cells, the device “heard” the men admit to the crime...

In the June 1912 issue of “Popular Electricity,” novelist Edward Lyell Fox wrote: “In the past six months the dictograph has revolutionized crime prevention. In walls, under sofas and chairs, in chandeliers, behind desks, beside a window, it is the unseen listener to secret conversations. The secret of prison cells have been tapped, hotel rooms and offices have given up incriminating conversation… It has figured sensationally in the undoing of dynamiters, legislative bribe takers, grafters high and crooks low, across the continent.” (more)

The 100th anniversary of the Dictograph is coming up soon. Turner would be stunned by today's eavesdropping and wiretapping technology. Also stunned are its victims. Make sure you are not one of them. Call me. I have a time-proven (30+ years) protection program waiting to solve your concerns. ~Kevin

Lincoln's spy. In Jefferson Davis' home!

William Jackson was a slave in the home of Confederate president Jefferson Davis during the Civil War. It turns out he was also a spy for the Union Army, providing key secrets to the North about the Confederacy.

William Jackson, a slave, listened closely to Jefferson Davis' conversations and leaked them to the North.

Jackson was Davis' house servant and personal coachman. He learned high-level details about Confederate battle plans and movements because Davis saw him as a "piece of furniture" -- not a human, according to Ken Dagler, (sic) author of "Black Dispatches," which explores espionage by America's slaves...

...slaves who served as spies were able to collect incredibly detailed information, in large part because of their tradition of oral history. Because Southern laws prevented blacks from learning how to read and write, he said, the slave spies listened intently to minute details and memorized them...

Jackson wasn't the only spy. There were hundreds of them... One of the most iconic spies was Harriet Tubman, who ran the Underground Railroad... (more)

Skype in the Crosshairs

Suspicious phone conversations on Skype could be targeted for tapping as part of a pan-European crackdown on what law authorities believe is a massive technical loophole in current wiretapping laws, allowing criminals to communicate without fear of being overheard by the police.

The European investigation could also help U.S. law enforcement authorities gain access to Internet calls. The National Security Agency (NSA) is understood to believe that suspected terrorists use Skype to circumvent detection.

While the police can get a court order to tap a suspect's land line and mobile phone, it is currently impossible to get a similar order for Internet calls on both sides of the Atlantic. (more)

MP3 Player Doubles As SpyCam

from the seller's web site...
"The common Mini MP3 Player, which comes with other useful and powerful features. This Player is included a camera and a mic, which can be used as a video camera recorder, voice recorder and still image camera." $46. (more)

Business Espionage - Secret Windows OS Stolen

Australia - An unnamed Telstra executive has sparked a major security scare at Microsoft after a phone loaded with a secret upcoming version of the Windows Mobile operating system was stolen out of his pocket in Spain.

The phone belonged to Telstra chief executive Sol Trujillo, who was testing the device before its release at the end of the year, News Ltd reported. But a spokesman for the telco would not confirm this.

The spokesman said the phone - developed by HTC and loaded with Microsoft's top-secret Windows Mobile 6.5 operating system - was in the possession of another unnamed Telstra executive at the time of the theft.

The incident could have serious implications for Microsoft as Windows Mobile 6.5 has hardly been touched by anyone outside the company and high-level telco executives.

Leaks regarding the features and early bugs in the software could mar its launch, which would be damaging as Microsoft is pinning its hopes on Windows Mobile 6.5 to give it an edge over new competitors such as the iPhone and Google's Android operating system. (more)

Job opportunity...
Telstra is the Australian telephone company. They are probably looking for a new assistant to the president.

Security opportunity...
This loss might have been preventable. Hire a good counterespionage consultant to help protect your company's intellectual property and detect electronic surveillance (eavesdropping, wiretapping and data theft).
Contact me for recommendations, worldwide. ~Kevin

This unfortunate high-value loss was forwarded to us by Jayde Consulting in Australia.
"Jayde Consulting provides professional and discrete services to protect sensitive, confidential and commercially valuable information from electronic eavesdropping, surveillance and espionage."

Credit card numbers stolen... blah, blah, blah.

We hear it every day.
Here we go again...

Hackers broke into a computer at Wyndham Hotels and Resorts last July and stole tens of thousands of customer credit card numbers, the hotel chain warns.

The break-in occurred at a property belonging to a Wyndham franchisee, but that computer was linked to other company systems. "That intrusion enabled a hacker to use the company server to search for customer information located at other franchised and managed property sites," the company said in a statement disclosing the breach.

The data was then uploaded to a Web site during July and August of 2008, Wyndham said. The company estimates that 41 Wyndham hotels and resorts were affected by the breach before it was discovered by the company's information security team in mid-September. (more)

Is data theft preventable?
Lots of people think so.
Explore the solutions being offered...
Voltage Security
PGP Corporation
Protegrity
TriGeo

Make your phone lie.

People are making Caller ID lie for them... "Spoofcard allows me to make my calls truly private. I can display any number on the Caller ID, record my calls and change my voice." Try it yourself. Free. (more)

Make your phone confess.

Hate blocked Caller ID calls?
Force a confession out of them.
Here's how...
"Trapcall will unblock and reveal the actual caller ID (and name) when a call has been blocked. No software or download needed! ...Record all of your incoming calls! ...Read your voicemail messages via SMS while in a meeting, class, movie or other busy area! ...Block unwanted callers! ...Billing name and address!"
Try it out. Free. (more)

FutureWatch - The 10 Trillion Bit, 2-Bit Drive

Keeping track of your data will become soon more difficult...
Ting Xu, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley and Thomas Russell, a professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, have created a technique that could, theoretically, pack a disk the size of a quarter with 10.5 terabits (more than 10 trillion bits) of data, the equivalent of 250 DVDs. (more)

Until then, we can still cram a lot of data into a Murray Associates Spy Coin. They are going fast. Find out how you can get one. (more)

"Holy Firewall, Splatman!"

New data shows businesses may be clueless about proxy abuse in their organizations...

Schools long have struggled with savvy students who run anonymous Web proxy tools to bypass Web filters and secretly access banned Websites and content. But the use of these potentially dangerous tools within the enterprise appears to be more widespread than was once thought.

A new study released today indicates that businesses may be clueless about the breadth of the problem: While 15 percent of IT managers report that Web filter bypass tools are in use in their organizations, it turns out that these tools are actually in use in three out of four organizations, according to FaceTime Communications, which polled both IT managers and its own customers on the topic.

"In some cases, the perception is not reality," says Frank Cabri, vice president of marketing and product management for FaceTime, whose customers provided the actual usage data in the study. "This doesn't surprise us -- but the difference [in perception and reality] is dramatic." (more)

"...employee use of Web 2.0 applications such as Instant Messaging, IPTV, VoIP and Social Networking on corporate networks exceeds IT estimates by up to 10 times." (more)

Why is all this important to you?
• Your IT folks are not seeing this end run. ($)
• You are probably paying your employees to surf, not work. ($$)
• It is an open back door to your intellectual property. ($$$)

You know it's a bad law when...

Swedish intelligence official quits over wiretapping law...

Sweden - Anders Björck, a high-ranking Moderate Party politician and former defence minister has resigned from his post as head of Sweden’s intelligence oversight agency in protest against the country’s controversial wiretapping law... because he lacks confidence in the new surveillance measure which came into force January 1st... "I've thought it over carefully. The laws and the oversight activities now under consideration don’t foster privacy or efficacy." (more)

Greek Olympic Committee President Bugged

via WhiteSparks...
Greek police are investigating the discovery of an object they believe could be a covert listening device in the Athens office of Greek Olympic Committee president Minos Kyriakou.

In a statement released on Friday, Attica regional police confirmed they had been called to Kyriakou's office late on Thursday evening.

"In the evening hours of February 5, 2009 our service was informed about the existence at the office of the president of the Hellenic Olympic Committee of a suspicious object that appeared like a microphone for monitoring conversations," the statement said.

"The police were requested to investigate the incident. The object was collected and was forwarded for further examination, the result of which is still pending."

The investigation comes less than a week before the election for the new president of the committee which Kyriakou is contesting with Spyros Kapralos, the chairman of the Athens Stock Exchange. (more)

WhiteSparks is a free email newsletter sponsored by WhiteRockGlobal, a premier TSCM consultancy located near London. Contact them for a subscription: whitenews@whiterockglobal.com