Australia - The general manager of a council in Sydney's inner-west has admitted spending council funds to employ a surveillance company to follow a man he feared was involved with his wife... It is alleged Mr Romano used council funds to pay for security expenses for personal purposes. Mr Romano has told the inquiry he spent more than $44,000 to conduct surveillance on a man he believed may have been harassing his family. The inquiry also heard Mr Romano thought the man was involved with his wife. (more)
Monday, March 22, 2010
Friday, March 19, 2010
Catch an E-Mail Snoop Yourself
Better than a Sharp Stick in the Eye Alarm System
The Snow Queen or The Emporer's New Clothes? You decide.
From those wonderful folks who brought us Hans Christian Andersen...
“Dry” fog from PROTECT A/S obscures everything in protected areas in less than 20 seconds after a break-in. When activated, the fog generator produces dense but harmless fog and making thieves flee the way they got in. Because thieves cannot steal what they cannot see!
A PROTECT™ Fog Cannon completes the “circle of protection” when used with conventional burglar alarms, giving customers an additional sense of security. (more) (actual break-in video)
A competing product, FlashFog, also has some great surveillance and demo videos worth viewing.
A PROTECT™ Fog Cannon completes the “circle of protection” when used with conventional burglar alarms, giving customers an additional sense of security. (more) (actual break-in video)
A competing product, FlashFog, also has some great surveillance and demo videos worth viewing.
Looks pretty cool. I'll go with Snow Queen.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
World's Smallest Autofocus
LensVector Inc. has developed an autofocus technology that may make cameras again a main focal point on mobile phones.
LensVector’s autofocus device, which the company says is the smallest ever, sheers and focuses light using LCD technology. And, very importantly, it has no moving parts. LensVector has its sights set on cameras for cell phones, laptops and other mobile devices. (more)
(FutureWatch) ...like contact lenses for microbots or telephoto lenses for spycams, perhaps?
Your espionage is wildly successful. What's next?
China's relationship with foreign companies is starting to sour, as tougher government policies and intensifying domestic competition combine to make one of the world's most important markets less friendly to multinationals.
Interviews with executives, lawyers, and consultants with long experience in China point to developments they say are making it much harder for many foreign companies to succeed. They say the changes suggest Beijing is reassessing China's long-standing emphasis on opening its economy to foreign business—epitomized by the changes it made to join the World Trade Organization in 2001—and tilting toward promoting dominant state companies. (more)
Interviews with executives, lawyers, and consultants with long experience in China point to developments they say are making it much harder for many foreign companies to succeed. They say the changes suggest Beijing is reassessing China's long-standing emphasis on opening its economy to foreign business—epitomized by the changes it made to join the World Trade Organization in 2001—and tilting toward promoting dominant state companies. (more)
“There are louder voices pushing China to be more protectionist and to be more nationalist.” Lester Ross, managing partner in Beijing for WilmerHale law firmThe International Monetary Fund on Wednesday lent its support to calls by the United States for China to allow its "much undervalued" currency to rise, amid EU complaints of protectionism. (more)
Monday, March 15, 2010
Murray Associates / Spybusters featured in the Tektronix March 2010 Newsletter
Case Study: Spybusters Tracks Down Hidden Eavesdropping Devices
New technologies are making it easier than ever to listen in on private conversations. High-tech bugs are easy to plant and hard to detect, and are turning up in boardrooms and offices where they are not wanted. Learn how Spybusters LLC, a firm that specializes in detecting and removing surveillance devices, used Tektronix Real-Time Spectrum Analyzers to keep clients' offices bug-free. (Tektronix newsletter) (full story)
Password Whacker now a 100x Faster Cracker
Password-cracking tools optimised to work with SSDs (solid state drives) have achieved speeds up to 100 times quicker than previously possible.
After optimising its rainbow tables of password hashes to make use of SSDs Swiss security firm Objectif Sécurité was able to crack 14-digit WinXP passwords with special characters in just 5.3 seconds. Objectif Sécurité's Philippe Oechslin told Heise Security that the result was 100 times faster than possible with their old 8GB Rainbow Tables for XP hashes.
The exercise illustrated that the speed of hard discs rather than processor speeds was the main bottleneck in password cracking based on password hash lookups. (more)
If Tiger Woods' cell phone had this...
...he would be working on his putts today.
(from the manufacturer's press release...)FlexiSHIELD is software for cell phones that effectively creates an 'invisibility' shield for your phone, protecting SMS, EMAIL, MMS, Phone Logs and actual Phone Calls from prying eyes.
For any phone number, or Contact that you specify, FlexiSHIELD will automatically hide any incoming or outgoing SMS, MMS, EMAIL, Phone Logs and actual Phone Calls in an invisible vault on the phone itself.
When installed and activated, there is no indication of the application, and all message and call notifications are suppressed, making FlexiSHIELD totally invisible in operation. (more)
No, it won't work on your iPhone or BlackBerry. Currently, it is only compatible with Windows Mobile / Nokia cell phones. Yes, these are the same people who make the cell phone spyware.
FutureWatch... It will be interesting to see how this development affects law enforcement, cell phone forensic investigations.
"How small are GSM bugs?"
A. They can be as small as a Compact Flash card.This is a question I hear frequently, along with...
"How expensive are they?"
($20 to $80)
"Where are people getting these?"
"How do they work?" Plug in a SIM card and hide it. Call the listening device using any phone, from anywhere in the world. Or... some models will call, or text, you whenever it hears someone in the vicinity talking!
"How do you find them?"
In 2009, Murray Associates developed a proprietary test - Digital Surveillance Location Analysis™ (DSLA™) - which plots the location of these normally dormant devices on a computer screen map, using triangulation.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Ain't this a kick in the head? (again)
Erin Muller says she found a GPS tracking device attached to the undercarriage of her car two weeks ago ... and Erin tells TMZ she believes her ex Michael Lohan is the one who put it there. Muller claims her dad found the device -- which can track the whereabouts of her vehicle in real time -- while he was checking for an oil leak... According to Muller's lawyer, cops are investigating the situation as a felony eavesdropping case -- and, as a result, Erin says she's so paranoid that she's going to have her apartment swept for bugs. (more)
Leave a key under the mat, Erin...
Michael Lohan has released an audio tape exclusively to RadarOnline.com which he says proves that his ex-fiance Erin Muller broke the restraining order against her, ultimately leading to her arrest on Thursday. (more)
Saturday, March 13, 2010
And you thought TSCM was difficult in China...
China - Four private detectives from Liaoning province have been sentenced to prison terms ranging from seven to eight months in Chaoyang district court for running an illegal operation... The men registered their private detective agency in February 2009, describing it as a "business consultancy." Detective agencies are not legal in China. The men were accused of tracking, photographing and locating people between February and August 2009. (more)
If you need TSCM advice/assistance in any country, please call us, we can help you do it legally.
Friday, March 12, 2010
Out of the Box Malware
Security researchers report that malware has been discovered on a Vodafone HTC Magic smartphone running Google's Android operating system. The discover comes just days after battery producer Energizer acknowledged that the Windows software it had been distributing for its Duo USB charger was infected with a Trojan. (more)
Eavesdropping as Entertainment
You have to be sharp to keep up with the changing social mores. While "don't stare" "don't point your finger" are withstanding the changing social landscape, "don't eavesdrop" has not. Hundreds of thousands of Web sites now specialized in eavesdropping as entertainment.
One example, as reported by the Sun Sentinal...
"Today, I was working at Publix ringing up some 70 year old woman. She says ‘Man, you're a fast cashier, I like my men fast!' and then gives me a wink. I got really nervous and didn't know how to respond, so not thinking, I quickly said, ‘Yeah, me too.' FML"
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Murdoch’s News of the World censured for bugging on an “industrial scale”
UK - A report by the Culture, Media and Sports Select Committee has exposed the contempt that the mass circulation Sunday newspaper, News of the World (NoW), part of Rupert Murdoch’s media giant News International, has for basic democratic rights, parliament and the rule of law.
Its 167 pages, part of a wider inquiry into press standards, libel law reform, privacy and press regulation, found that the newspaper had lied about the extent to which its journalists had illegally hacked into the phones of the police, the military, royals, government ministers, celebrities and other well-known people in the top echelons of British society—in what was described by one MP as hacking on a “near industrial scale.” (more)
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