Here are a few of the stories capturing our attention here...Industrial Espionage Negates Reinventing the Wheel• The global security chief for Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. revealed an intellectual property theft. Seems a couple of engineers from another tire company tricked their way into Goodyear, distracted their escort, took cell phone photos of special manufacturing equipment and emailed them to their headquarters. The information was used to make similar machinery for a Chinese tire manufacturer. That contract was worth about $1.2 million.The alleged spy guys? Wyko Tire Technology Ltd., West Midlands, UK.Conclusion: No business safe from industrial espionage. The more your information is worth, the more it will be targeted. The method of theft used here was preventable. Good counterespionage consultants know how. All a business has to do is ask.Boardroom Bug Hides in Plain Sight• Our spybusters found a Boardroom speakerphone this month which allowed eavesdropping. We routinely check speakerphone feature settings to see if the auto-answer feature is active. If it is, eavesdropping is easy. Simply dial the Boardroom number when it is is vacant, stay on the line and wait for the meeting to begin. This is a surprisingly well-known (and used) eavesdropping trick. Solutions: Only connect the Boardroom speakerphone to the outside line when it is actually needed. Next best... Deactivate the auto-answer feature permanently. If permanent deactivation is not possible, program it off. Your countermeasures team will re-inspect it for you each visit. You do have a countermeasures team checking your Boardroom, don't you?Hotels Are Fertile Ground for Voyeurs• There has been a recent uptick in hotel voyeurism stories here. Most involve spycams, a few about holes poked in walls, and this odd-ball story out of Florida... with implications for travelers everywhere: A husband and wife checked into their hotel room and noticed the peephole in the door had been reversed! People on the outside could clearly see into their room. Hotel door peepholes are mandated by law in the U.S. This door had two of them; one at regular height, and lower one three feet from the ground (legally compliant for people in wheelchairs). The lower one was reversed. Hotels in the Hollywood, Florida area cater to young couples visiting on vacation, school breaks and cruise ships. The area is a rich target for pornography manufacturers. It is unlikely this is an isolated incident. Recommendations: Keep a small, high-power flashlight in your kit and a long pin (for poking into pin-holes, of course). Carefully check your hotel room upon arrival. Start with the peephole. Look into unusual holes, open vents, etc. keeping in mind the field of view from that perspective. Bathrooms and beds are usually the targeted viewing areas. Be aware of electronic items which do not look like standard hotel room items. A clock (or clock radio) which looks too new, for example, could be a spycam. If in doubt, face it toward the wall. "Smoke detectors" in strange places, or too many of them, is another clue there might be a problem. If you think you have found something suspicious, call the police, not the front desk, for further investigation. You want your case well-documented, and the evidence properly handled when you say, "See you in court."If your business is holding an off-site meeting at a hotel or resort, bring along your countermeasures team. In addition to preventing information losses, they can save you from this type of embarrassment.Want to Spy on the International Space Station?Click here. While the crew is working you can eavesdrop on their transmissions - often sporadic - and watch the progress map. During sleep periods, they turn on the outside spycams. Just listening to them now. Interesting. They are housecleaning. Sucking lint out of the ducts with a vacuum cleaner! Houston said, "Glad it is all clean and you didn't see a pair of eyes staring back at you."From America, this is Kevin.
German authorities have searched the offices of mail and logistics company Deutsche Post in connection with a snooping scandal at Deutsche Telekom... Deutsche Telekom acknowledged in June last year that it had illegally monitored phone call records in 2005 and 2006, amid allegations that Telekom had targeted board members and journalists to stop media leaks. (more)
MD - Scientists have come a bit closer to achieving the "Star Trek" feat of teleportation.
No one is galaxy-hopping, or even beaming people around, but for the first time, information has been teleported between two separate atoms across a distance of a meter — about a yard.This is a significant milestone in a field known as quantum information processing, said Christopher Monroe of the Joint Quantum Institute at the University of Maryland, who led the effort. (more)Such long-distance quantum communication theoretically would be completely secure and immune to eavesdropping. (more)
From the website...
Founded in 1998, Passware, Inc. is the worldwide leading maker of password recovery and decryption software for corporations, law enforcement and forensic agencies, help desk personnel, business and home users.
Numerous federal, state, and local government agencies, Fortune 500 companies, and thousands of private users rely on Passware software products to ensure data availability in the event of lost passwords.
A few of our customers include: Microsoft, Adobe, Apple, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, KPMG, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Department of Justice, US Senate, NASA, FDA, IRS, and many more.
Passware is a privately held corporation with head office in Mountain View, CA and software development and engineering office in Moscow, Russia. The company is self-funded, debt-free, and profitable from its inception. (additional resource)Interesting two-edged sword.
MI - An arrest warrant says a suspect accused of placing hidden video cameras in one of his father's rental properties put the devices in a bedroom and a bathroom, court records reveal.Bradley Scott-Irving Graves, 25, waived a probable cause hearing Wednesday in Rockford District Court and will face trial on two two-year felony charges for possessing and installing eavesdropping equipment...The arrest affidavit alleges Graves went to the home and told the tenants he was installing a smoke detector in the bedroom and a mold detector in the bathroom.A man in the home was suspicious of the claim from Graves, who acts as the maintenance person for his father's rentals, according to court documents."(The victim) further investigated and noted that the mold detector was a camera as well as the detector in the bedroom," sheriff's Detective Ed Kolakowski wrote in court records.Police also found a VCR recording from the devices in a basement. (more) (more) (more) (video)
UPDATE - 5/7/09 - A high tech peeper has admitted to installing a camera in his tenant's shower. This week Bradley Graves entered a guilty plea to a felony charge of eavesdropping, installing and using a device. Graves will be sentenced in June. (more)
UK - Inventor of the web Tim Berners-Lee, along with other online security specialists at the Houses of Parliament in London, have warned that the ever-increasing power of computers is threatening the future of the Internet.The experts are mainly concerned about deep packet inspection (DPI), a technique that makes it possible to peer inside packets of data transmitted across the Internet...He says that DPI is like wiretapping, and can enable firms to learn a huge amount about peoples "lives, hates and fears". (more)
UK - A leading British manufacturer has been caught up in an industrial espionage row after two engineers used a mobile telephone to photograph a secret piece of equipment at an American factory.The photographs are alleged to have been used by Wyko Tire Technology in Dudley, West Midlands, to manufacturer a specialist tyre machine for a Chinese company.Engineers Clark Roberts and Sean Howley are alleged to have tricked their way into the Goodyear factory in Kansas to take seven photographs of machinery used make large “off the road” tyres for earth moving equipment, it is claimed.The pictures were emailed to two Wyko employees at the factory in Britain and were used to manufacturer a similar piece of equipment for the Haohau South China Guilin Rubber Company based in north east China. The contract with the Chinese company was worth $1.2million.Mr Roberts, 46, and Mr Howley, 38 - both employees of Wyko Tire Technology Inc in Greenback, Tennessee - have been charged with 12 offences relating to the theft of trade secrets and wire fraud. They face a maximum sentence of 150 years in prison and a fine of $2.75million (£2million). (more)
Cell phones belonging to hospital staff were found to be tainted with bacteria, including the drug-resistant MRSA superbug, and may be a source of hospital-acquired infections, according to a new study.
Ninety-five percent of the mobile phones were contaminated with at least one type of bacteria, with the potential to cause illness ranging from minor skin irritations to deadly disease.
Most worrying, one in eight of the handsets showed methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA), a virulent strain that has emerged as a major health threat in hospitals around the world. (more)
Why mention this?
I like to keep my clients safe, healthy, happy and alive.
Your cell phone, desk phone, keyboard and mouse could probably 
use a cleaning - like right now. Solutions: compressed air, cotton swabs, lint-free cloth, cleaning fluids, antibacterial wet wipes and sprays. "But wait." Look what I found! A new crud-goop product which is easier and more fun to use. (video) (ebay)
Michael Strahan An Example Case Of Surveillance Spyware Used On Loved OnesAn estimated 3.4 million Americans have been subjected to stalking...When former Giants defensive end Michael Strahan reportedly suspected his girlfriend Nicole Murphy, actor Eddie Murphy's ex-wife, of cheating on him, he allegedly installed a tracking device in her car on two separate occasions, reports CBS News science and technology correspondent Daniel Sieberg reports.And those weren't the only times Strahan has been accused of using technology to monitor those around him. His ex-wife has accused him of tapping her phone and installing a secret video camera... (more) (video)
New Zealand - A promising engineering student who deliberately deleted crucial information from his employer's computer backup systems cost the company hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost business and data recovery. Gareth Pert, 23, nearly crippled Hamilton business Progressive Hydraulics while acting out of "pure vindictiveness", said company director Rodney Sharp...
Pert was arrested last month at Auckland International Airport upon his return from Afghanistan where he had been working since the sabotage was reported."His motivation was that he believed he was worth more than he was getting paid. Instead of talking to us, he started adding on five hours on his time card, so we pulled him up on it," Sharp says. "I was probably the first person to sit him down and put him in his place... I said, `You've cribbed your time cards.' He said, `I'm worth it'. I said, `I don't care how good you are, it's just dishonest'." Pert then wiped the backups and never returned to work.
There is evidence he also copied some of the commercially sensitive data but he told police he couldn't remember what he did with it. (more)
Try saying "Afghanistan banana stand" to him.
Scotland - A USB drive is missing from Lothian and Borders Police with details of hundreds of police investigations... “It is understood that the information contained on the stick was not encrypted as it was information being transferred within a secure compound within Police Headquarters,” the police spokesman revealed. (more)How to Crypt Your Stick for FREE.
The universe of private eavesdropping detection practitioners is small, maybe several hundred.The world of knowledgeable private practitioners is smaller, maybe fifty.Then, there is a tiny archipelago of knowledgeable and respected specialists who gravitated to this profession by their innate desire to help others.
Patrick Allan Bennett was one of these Islands. All who knew him, miss him. All who might have known him suffer the loss, unaware.It is not surprising that one of Patrick's outstanding accomplishments was that he was the first Eagle Scout of Troop 74 in Marinwood, CA.Professionally, he was a private investigator and Vice President of Walsingham Associates – one of the very best TSCM companies in the business. I know. I regularly entrust my clients to their care; for over 15 years. Fortunately, Walsingham Associates continues under the guidence of William Bennett.His family's description is moving, "Patrick was a kind, gentle man who loved his family and valued his friendships." You can see it in his face, can't you?There will be a Memorial Service from 11:00 am to 1:00 pm, Tuesday, March 10 at the Lima Family Mortuary Chapel, (408) 263-2868, located at 48800 Warm Springs Blvd, Fremont, CA 94539. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Marin Council Boy Scouts of America, 225 West End Ave. San Rafael, CA 94901
Good-bye, friend.
...all Symbian 60 handsets are at risk.
Taiwan - Authorities in Taipei raided a shop accused of selling mobile phone spying software on Friday, warning that many cellphones are vulnerable to surreptitious eavesdropping and monitoring of text messages...Police said that the cellphone spyware was used by private investigators to catch people in extramarital affairs, but that it had also been used in instances of industrial espionage. (more)
Turkey - Justice Minister Mehmet Ali Şahin has announced illegal wiretappings will be more severely punished through a planned amendment in the penal code.Turkey - Phone tapping and bugging scandals caused booming sales of GSM "jamming" device that jams GSM radio signals. Demand mostly comes from businessmen and artists. "The price range is between 380 TL and 30,000 TL for jamming devices which can stop all mobile phone conversations and bugging," says Mustafa Ender, executive of a company selling jammers. "Another device that spots hidden cameras starts from 575 TL," he says. (more)
TN - Goodyear called in the FBI when the company suspected someone was spying on closely guarded technology for making tires.The global security chief for Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. said in a statement Saturday that the company alerted the FBI after an internal investigation into what he called an apparent attempt in 2007 to steal proprietary technology. (more)This is an excellent example of a properly run corporate security program. Spot the spies during their intelligence collection process. Result: Damage thwarted, cheaply. (formal version of this philosophy)Interesting back-story...The FBI probe was followed by federal charges Friday against two engineers for a Tennessee company, Wyko Tire Technology Inc. in Greenback near Knoxville. The engineers, Clark Alan Roberts and Sean Edward Howley, pleaded not guilty to counts including trade secret theft, wire fraud and conspiracy... Wyko, part of Netherlands-based Eriks Group, designs and builds tire making equipment for tire companies, including Akron, Ohio-based Goodyear... Wyko had contracted to provide Haohau South China Guilin Rubber Co. Ltd. under a $1.2 million order. Wyko had never built one of the machines, the indictment says.
