Mobile Phone Spyware Crackdown

Romanian authorities arrested 50 individuals for using a special mobile-phone program to spy on their spouses, business partners or the competition. The spyware was able to steal call logs, e-mails, SMS messages or GPS data from smartphones and allowed attackers to eavesdrop on active phone calls and private discussions held in the vicinity of the device...

Police also arrested Dan Nicolae Oproiu, 30, of Deva, Hunedoara, an IT specialist who sold the surveillance program through a variety of websites. ...the spyware application was available for Symbian, Windows Mobile, iPhone OS and BlackBerry OS and came in three versions - Light, Pro and ProXRecorder, which differed in features.

Most of Oproiu's clients who were arrested two days ago did not have a criminal background and many were members of the so-called upper class. The list includes several businessmen, doctors, engineers, as well as a government official, a former member of the Parliament, a police officer, a prosecutor and even a judge. There are also strong indications that the software was also unlawfully used by several detective agencies and private investigators. (more)

Phone Eavesdropping in Vogue Again

The huge rise in physical data security measures has inadvertently triggered a new line of attack for criminals: phone correspondence.  

With traditional identity theft channels now closing, fraudsters are increasingly targeting unprotected voice conversations to obtain confidential insider information, passwords and PIN codes without detection. Voice correspondence is almost always uncharted territory for business security armour under the false assumption that phone hacking is a highly sophisticated and expensive means of attack.

The days of phone fraud involving thousands of pounds of equipment and an extensive army of technology experts are long gone. Only in December it was revealed that a computer engineer had broken the algorithm used to encrypt the majority of the world’s digital mobile phone calls online, and published his method...

...when assessing the threat posed by phone fraudsters and criminals, we need look no further than the regular examples of celebrity phone eavesdropping that is becoming commonplace. Even high profile national newspapers like the News of the World have become embroiled in the scandal, resulting in one of their reporters being jailed for listening in on calls between members of the royal family. Liberal Democrat Lembit Opik recently went public saying he was concerned his phone calls were being intercepted and PR guru Max Clifford settled a hacking dispute out of court for a six-figure sum. And who can forget the case of Tiger Woods, who found himself in hot water after several voicemail and text messages fell in the lap of numerous national newspapers and celebrity magazines.

These celebrity incidents are serious enough, but business leaders and public sector chiefs now need to readdress their approach to voice and message security, to protect themselves against this growing threat. 

Increasingly, phone fraudsters are being hired or trained by rival businesses, getting insider information and critical data without ever being suspected. (more)

Information about Cell Phone Privacy is available with a google search. Businesses, however, require additional assistance with making sure their phones (analog, digital and VoIP digital) remain untapped. Quarterly inspections by a TSCM security specialist are the norm. For additional information about these services click here, or contact the company who provided this link to Kevin's Security Scrapbook.

Twenty Minutes into the Future

Australia - Companies who provide customers with a connection to the internet may soon have to retain subscriber's private web browsing history for law enforcement to examine when requested, a move which has been widely criticised by industry insiders.

Currently, companies that provide customers with a connection to the internet don't retain or log subscriber's private web browsing history unless they are given an interception warrant by law enforcement, usually approved by a judge. It is only then that companies can legally begin tapping a customer's internet connection. (more)

FutureWatch - Ask Blank Reg over at Max Headroom. Watch out for Murray, he's clueless. Bilp-def... "Blanks, a counter-culture group of people who lived without any official numbers or documentation for the sake of privacy."

Hackers plant viruses in Windows smartphone games

3D Anti-Terrorist and PDA Poker Art -- are available on sites that provide legitimate software for mobile devices, according to John Hering, CEO of San Francisco-based security firm Lookout.

Those games are bundled with malicious software that automatically dials premium-rate telephone services in Somalia, Italy and other countries, sometimes ringing up hundreds of dollars in charges in a single month.

Victims generally do not realize they have been infected until they get their phone bill and see hundreds of dollars of unexpected charges for those premium-rate services, he said. (more) 

FutureWatch - Expect this trend to continue. Un-vetted software apps (unlike Apple apps) are currently the easiest targets.

Nineteen Minutes into the Future

Italy - Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi advanced a draft law through the senate that restricts the use of wiretaps by prosecutors and introduces fines and prison sentences for journalists who issue reports on tapped conversations.

The draft law's passage on Thursday by the senate prompted a torrent of criticism from Italian prosecutors, newspapers and opposition lawmakers. Mr. Berlusconi, a media magnate, says the bill aims to protect the privacy of Italians. Critics say the draft legislation, which still faces a vote in the lower house of Parliament, is an attempt by Mr. Berlusconi to weaken the judiciary branch's investigative powers and muzzle criticism of the prime minister in Italian media.

"The massacre of freedom has begun," said Anna Finocchiaro, a senator in the center-left Democratic Party. (more)

No pun intended?

Headline: "Italy's daily runs blank page"
Italy's left-leaning La Repubblica daily on Friday ran an all-white front page to protest a bill curbing police wiretaps and setting hefty fines on media for publishing transcripts of them. 'The muzzling law denies citizens the right to be informed,' reads a message, styled as a yellow Post-It note, on the otherwise blank space under the La Repubblica banner. (more)

Eighteen Minutes into the Future - Teleportation and the end of wiretapping?

A group of Chinese scientists has successfully achieved teleportation up to 9.9 miles, using quantum entanglement of photons...

"This is the longest reported distance over which photonic teleportation has been achieved to date, more than 20 times longer than the previous implementation," Discovery News quoted Cheng-Zhi Peng, one of the co-authors of the study and a scientist at University of Science and Technology of China and Tsinghua University in Beijing, as saying.

In science fiction, teleportation usually describes the transfer of matter from one point to another, more or less instantaneously - a spooky aspect of quantum mechanics.

According to the theory, bits of light and matter can become entangled with one another and anything that happens to one particle will happen to the other, regardless of the distance or intervening matter...

A teleported telephone call, although no faster than a regular one, would however, be impenetrable and eavesdropping on a teleported telephone call would be impossible. (more)

The research is published in the current issue of the journal Nature Photonics.

FutureWatch: Teleportation's integration with communications. Then, teleportation as it relates to synchronicity... and a possible explanation to "it's a small world" and other coincidences.

Why do we eavesdrop?

Did you know, "that five and six centuries ago, English citizens had, in impressive numbers, been arrested for eavesdropping."

 

Want to know more? 

Eavesdropping: An Intimate History, by John Locke, is going to be released June 25th. (ISBN 13: 9780199236138)

The author writes...

"I wondered what, in the medieval mind, would have caused this behavior to be criminalized, and what the “criminals” themselves were doing, or thought they were doing, when they went out at night and listened to their neighbors’ conversations...

...until I began to study eavesdropping... I had never, in many years of research, encountered a behavior whose actual significance was so greatly at variance with its recognized importance. Look for books on social behavior with the word “eavesdropping” in the index section and you are likely to be severely disappointed. Enter the same word in computerized literature searches and your screen will display a list of books on wiretapping and other forms of electronic surveillance. But the word was coined centuries before telephones and recording equipment were invented, and the practice of eavesdropping documented nearly a thousand years earlier, when people were happy to entrust to unaided senses the question of who was doing what to whom." (more) (review)

Fascinating.

Now they really have something to kick about...

During this FIFA world cup, England’s football coach, Fabio Capello, plans to spy on his players using hi-tech TVs installed in their hotel rooms in order to keep out their wives and girlfriends (called as WAGs) and ensuring that the players are getting proper rest. Apparently, he believes that a sex ban will ensure that the players are bursting with energy right through the world cup. (more)

Bad Day for Spies Worldwide

France - A former senior spy accused of revealing French state secrets and the identities of fellow operatives in his recently-released memoir was being questioned by French police today. Defence Minister Herve Morin filed a complaint against Pierre Siramy, whose real name is Maurice Dufresne, author of "25 Years in the Secret Services," released in April. (more)

S. Korea - South Korea's military on Wednesday sought an arrest warrant for a two-star army general accused of leaking the country's war plan and other secrets to North Korea, a news report said. The Defence Security Command asked military prosecutors to arrest the major-general identified only as Kim for leaking classified information, Yonhap news agency said. (more)

India - The army has started probing the charges of espionage against an army officer posted in Andaman and Nicobar. He is being suspected of spying for Pakistan. About a month ago, when reports emerged that a major in Port Blair was caught spying for Pakistan, the army had dismissed it saying that his computer had been hacked by an external agency. But the government is now expecting to unearth a much larger spy network embedded in the military. (more)

Afghanistan - Suspected Taliban militants executed a seven-year-old boy in southern Afghanistan after accusing him of spying for the government, a provincial official said Wednesday. The child was captured by the militants in Sangin district of southern province of Helmand Tuesday, Daoud Ahmadi, a spokesman for the provincial governor, said. "The militants killed the seven-year-old boy in Heratiyan village of the district, on charges of espionage for Afghan government," Ahmadi said, citing information provided to police by relatives. (more)

Beware the Attack of the Killer Apps

Security researchers and government officials are growing increasingly concerned about the security of smartphone applications. Those concerns have been prompted by the discovery of a number of potentially dangerous apps in the app stores run by smartphone makers...

The Federal Bureau of Investigation's Cyber Division, meanwhile, is investigating a number of malicious programs that have appeared in app stores, including apps designed to compromise mobile banking services and programs designed to be used by foreign countries to conduct espionage. (more)

"Just don't let the birds see them." ~Hitchcock

The way light hits a tropical butterfly's wings could make your bank card safer, according to a new U.K. study.

That's because scientists are now able to mimic the cell structure of butterfly scales to encrypt information on banknotes and other secure cards, researchers at Britain's Cambridge University say.

"We have unlocked one of nature's secrets and combined this knowledge with state-of-the-art nanofabrication to mimic the intricate optical designs found in nature," said lead researcher Mathias Kolle on the university's website. (more)

Run a shadow OS on your computer for super secrecy...

via lifehacker.com

...if you're really serious about protecting your data, you can actually hide your entire operating system. Here's how to do it.

To accomplish this task, we'll be using TrueCrypt, our favorite free and open-source disk encryption software that runs on all platforms, supports hidden volumes, and can even encrypt your entire hard drive.


Once we've completed the setup, you'll have two Windows installations and two passwords. One password will activate a hidden Windows installation as your real operating system, and the other, a decoy install to throw intruders off the trail. (more)

Mobile Smart Phone Spying... There are apps for that!

 As smartphones and the applications that run on them take off, businesses and consumers are beginning to confront a budding dark side of the wireless Web....

"Mobile phones are a huge source of vulnerability," said Gordon Snow, assistant director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Cyber Division. "We are definitely seeing an increase in criminal activity."

The FBI's Cyber Division recently began working on a number of cases based on tips about malicious programs in app stores, Mr. Snow said. The cases involve apps designed to compromise banking on cellphones, as well as mobile "malware" used for espionage by foreign nations, said a person familiar with the matter. To protect its own operations, the FBI bars its employees from downloading apps on FBI-issued smartphones. (more)

Buy, buy anonymous pre-paid cell phones...

A bipartisan pair of Senate leaders have introduced a first-of-its-kind bill aimed at stopping terrorist suspects such as the would-be Times Square bomber from hiding their identities by using prepaid cellphones to plot their attacks.

The legislation sponsored by Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) would require buyers to present identification when purchasing a prepaid cellphone and require phone companies to keep the information on file, as they do with users of landline phones and subscription-based cellphones. The proposal would require the carriers to retain the data for 18 months after the phone's deactivation. (more) 
...while you can.

"Y" ??? Because I liked you.

A former assistant to a top Disney executive was arrested for allegedly trying to sell the company's quarterly earnings to buyers who wanted to trade on inside information.
    

Prosecutors say Bonnie Hoxie, 33, who has worked as a secretary for Disney's PR chief since 2007, passed along inside information such as quarterly earnings statements to her boyfriend, Yonnie Sebbag aka Jonathan Cyrus, who was also arrested for his alleged role in the crime.
    

Sebbag, 29, then tried to sell the inside information to investors by sending anonymous letters to hedge funds and investment companies, according to the complaint in Federal Court. (more)