Sons of Blackwater Open Corporate Spying Shop

Veterans from the most infamous private security firm on Earth and one of the military’s most controversial datamining operations are teaming up to provide the Fortune 500 with their own private spies.

Take one part Blackwater, and another part Able Danger, the military data-mining op that claimed to have identified members of al-Qaida living in the United States before 9/11. Put ‘em together, and you’ve got a new company called Jellyfish. Jellyfish is about corporate-information dominance. (more)

VoIP Phone Eavesdropping Alert

Contact centers and businesses using a popular make of internet phone were at risk of having their communications intercepted and confidential information leaked, a hacking group demonstrated.

Security consultant Chris Gatford showed SC Magazine how internet-protocol phone systems from market leader Cisco were vulnerable out of the box to attacks that were widely known. He said customers of his had lost $20,000 a day through such exploits.

A Cisco spokesman said the networking vendor was serious about security and advised users to apply the relevant recommendations in the manual to secure their systems. 

( Products / Security)

Gatford said VoIP phone systems could turn on their users, hacked to become networked listening devices or 'bugs', wiretapped remotely or silenced, blacking out communications. Contact centers that often use internet-protocol phones because they were cheap to run, were especially at risk, he said.

“It is the closest attack in a real world environment that mimics so many of the scenes Hollywood likes to show us” Gatford said.

“You can imagine if you’re an employee who wants to listen into the boss during a meeting, that the phone in the conference room will be a target.” (more)

"£50,000, or yer lucky charms video goes public."

 Ireland - A group of men allegedly demanded £50,000 from a businessman by threatening to release a stolen video to the media, a court has heard.

Belfast Crown Court heard that police arrested two of the five defendants minutes after the alleged victim, known as Witness A, handed over £15,000.

A barrister told the court that the video was inside a car belonging to Witness A which was stolen in 2001.

He added the video "was of a nature that he did not want anyone to see". (more)

Super Injunctions - The New Privacy Club

Something rather interesting is happening to privacy, in the breakneck world of the internet. It's being privatized.

Legislatures around the world are flummoxed by the sheer breadth of the internet-related privacy issues piling up with exponential speed on their doorsteps...

As governments struggle with these questions, the privacy mercenaries are moving in. The most obvious example currently is in the United Kingdom, where a court remedy known as the "super injunction" has evolved as a high-priced means of shutting down unfavorable stories about celebrities and business people in the media. Here's how it works... (more)

More Sports Spying - The 2018 World Cup Caper

England football chiefs hired a team of spies to snoop on rival bidders for the 2018 World Cup, it was claimed yesterday.

Undercover agents were paid by the FA to infiltrate Zurich hotels where Fifa committee members were staying last December and report what they learned.

One FA spy even mingled with guests – including Prince William, PM David Cameron and David Beckham, who were drafted in at the last minute to lobby for the bid – in the city’s Baur au Lac hotel...

The FA refused to comment ­officially yesterday, but a 2018 official admitted to the Mirror: “Yes, we had a private security team.

“There were undercover people inside the Baur au Lac. They were in the lobby and the bar, listening in. It’s not illegal to listen to conversations.” (more)

Why is this important to you?

Sports is just another business. Big business. Just like your big business. The same tactics are being used against you. Most often it is successful and unnoticed. Time to bring a counterespionage consultant on board.

Spy News as seen from London - The WhiteRock Report

 via WhiteRock...
• Hotel Wiretapping: Latvian Security Services Accused in Planting Bugs in Radisson
• Apple Design Theft: Three Chinese Workers Charged over Leak of iPad 2 Specs
• Espionage Fear: Swiss Intelligence Lists Economic Spying among Major Security Threats
• Trillions for Trade Secrets: South Korean Security Service does the Espionage Maths

Hotel Wiretapping: Latvian Security Services Accused in Planting Bugs in Radisson
An eavesdropping scandal has broken out in Latvia, one of the Baltic States. An investigation was launched last week to find out whether the National Security Service has eavesdropped the VIP rooms in one of the high-end Radisson chain hotels, popular among foreign dignitaries.

The country’s former transportation minister, Ainars Slesers, made the allegation in a TV interview, which became the basis for the investigation. He claimed the luxury suites at the Radisson Blu Ridzene in the country’s capital Riga were bugged over a long period of time, while the hotel hosted numerous foreign and local high-ranking officials. The constitutional Protection Bureau, which carries out wiretaps in Latvia, refused to comment on the allegations. 

Raili Maripuu, WhiteRock Managing Director: "Many government bodies and global corporations alike neglect the appropriate security measures when utilising hotels to host high value meeting and events. This investigation into wiretapping in the Radisson hotel is a stark warning to businesses that rely solely on in-house security provisions. Solutions to counter unauthorised surveillance at events and meetings in public locations exist, which aim to mitigate exposure, maintain confidentiality and avoid subsequent embarrassment and financial loss."
Read Full Story from Original Source... 

Apple Design Theft: Three Chinese Workers Charged over Leak of iPad 2 Specs
Three employees of the China-based computer components manufacturer Foxconn, arrested in December 2010, were charged two weeks ago for violating trade secrets when leaking the design of the iPad 2.

Apple was alerted to the leak by the fact that some accessory manufacturers were prepared to offer cases for the iPad 2 ahead of the product itself going on sale. Foxconn supplies the components for the Apple products, such as iPhone, iPad and MacBook, but also works with HP, Dell, Microsoft, Sony and Samsung.
Read Full Story from Original Source...


DID YOU KNOW?
The US Congress recently gave an option to ban a scientific collaboration with China due to extremely high espionage risk. Source: Forbes 

Espionage Fear: Swiss Intelligence Lists Economic Spying among Major Security Threats
Switzerland’s National Security Service outlined commercial espionage as one of the greatest future threats in its report published last week.

The report warns that economic espionage can undermine state sovereignty, weaken the competitiveness of businesses established in Switzerland and threaten the financial industry. Swiss Federal Intelligence states further that to fight economic espionage, protective and preventative measures are needed, such as the Government’s Prophylax training programme, which aims to help private corporate and research institutions to better protect themselves.
Read Full Story from Original Source...


Trillions for Trade Secrets: South Korean Security Service does the Espionage Maths
The South Korean Industrial Security Center, which works under National Intelligence, estimates that the damage from trade secret leaks to local companies’ amounts to over 50 trillion KRW, i.e. nearly 28 million GBP per annum. (about 46 million USD)

The sum includes the funds that companies invest in technological development and the damage incurred by technology leaks leading to sales and export failure.

The Korean Association for Industrial Technology Security, which conducted a similar survey late last year, established that nearly 80% of the SMEs developing nationally important technologies found themselves at the danger level.
Read Full Story from Original Source...

Anatomy of an FBI Vehicle Tracking Device

The FBI's use of GPS vehicle tracking devices is becoming a contentious privacy issue in the courts, with the Obama administration seeking Supreme Court approval for its use of the devices without a warrant, and a federal civil rights lawsuit targeting the Justice Department for tracking the movements of an Arab-American student.

In the midst of this legal controversy, Threat Level decided to take a look at the inside of one of the devices — which are generally custom-made for law enforcement. Working with the teardown artists at iFixit, we examined a device an environmental activist discovered on her vehicle in 2005, which she recently provided to us.

What follows is iFixit's analysis of the first-ever dissection of an FBI vehicle tracker. (more)

WPEC Reports - Spying on you: Cell phone snoops

 

Our deepest secrets are often told during cell phone conversations. Could you imagine if someone would have constant access to your personal information by tapping into your cell phone and listening to your private conversations?

Chai Chaiyanan and his fellow college students are chatting, not knowing danger is about to walk by. A man swiped his smart phone. What the stranger is about to do is nothing short of spying. He's planting a special application that can turn Chai's phone against him, his every move monitored by a mobile spy app.

Turns out the scenario is not a real one and Chai knew he was being spied on. But FIU technology professor Faisal Kaleem, who posed for CBS 12 as our bad guy, says it can happen to you as long as you leave your phone unattended.

Kaleem is talking about powerful apps like Flexispy and others, that once secretly installed are hidden in your phone and untraceable to you.

Room bugging is one function. The bad guy calls the victim's cell and it instantly activates the phone like a microphone. The bad guy can monitor our conversation and the phone appears to be off. (more) (antidote)

Flash: World's Thinest Cell Phone to be announced tomorrow.

via gizmag.com...
Researchers from the Human Media Lab at Canada's Queen's University have created a fully-functioning floppy E-Ink smartphone, which they also refer to as a paper computer. Like its thicker, rigid-bodied counterparts, the Paperphone can do things like making and receiving calls, storing e-books, and playing music. Unlike them, however, it conforms to the shape of its user's pocket or purse, and can even be operated through bending actions.

"This computer looks, feels and operates like a small sheet of interactive paper," said its creator, Roel Vertegaal, who is also the director of the Human Media Lab. "You interact with it by bending it into a cell phone, flipping the corner to turn pages, or writing on it with a pen." ...

The technology is the result of a collaboration between Queen's University and Arizona State University, and will be officially presented on May 10th at the CHI 2011 conference in Vancouver.

"This is the future," said Vertegaal. "Everything is going to look and feel like this within five years." (more)

Santa Eyes Help Sanitize Bad Guys - UWB Radar Sees Through Walls

 There’s a new tool available for soldiers, special forces, and police officers who must surprise a high-value terrorist or enact a hostage rescue: a one-man backpack radar that can see through walls. 

The radar technology is a few years old, but the device — the Prism 200c system from Cambridge Consultants — fits into a small pack and weighs less than 15 pounds. It provides data on the location and movement of people inside a room or building on a handheld device, meaning only a single operator is needed. That’s a big advantage in the field; previous systems were heavier and required a second person with a laptop computer to receive the data. (more) (videos)

Security Fail #100 - The Secured Ladder

Seen in my travels...

When you want to keep your office ladder where it belongs you lock it up, right. A sturdy bicycle lock should do the trick. Smart. 

In fact, you might want to keep the bicycle lock attached to the ladder so you can lock it up wherever you happen to be using it. Oh, very smart! 

Electrical conduit in the maintenance closet makes a sturdy anchor. Nobody is going to risk getting electrocuted sawing through electrical conduit to steal a crummy ladder. Wow, very, very smart!! 

And, we'll attach the lock to the conduit with velcro in case we lose the key... (Blammmmmpppp!) FAIL.

Is that an Atomic Clock in your pocket, or are you just hot to see me?

Atomic clocks are one of those things that most of us have probably always thought of as being big, ultra-expensive, and therefore only obtainable by well-funded research institutes. While that may have been the case at one time, a team of researchers have recently developed an atomic clock that they say is one one-hundredth the size – and that uses one one-hundredth the power – of previous commercially-available products. It's called the Chip Scale Atomic Clock (CSAC), and it can be yours for about US$1,500 ... a little more than what you might pay for a regular clock, but not bad for one that varies by less than a millionth of a second per day. (more)

Update: Lyon Realty former CEO begins jail sentence

Michael Lyon, the former CEO of Lyon Real Estate, began serving a jail sentence Saturday after pleading guilty to felony eavesdropping... Under a plea agreement with the Sacramento County District Attorney's Office, Lyon was sentenced to one year in county jail followed by four years of formal probation. Lyon is serving time at Rio Cosumnes Correctional Center. According to the booking record, his scheduled release is Nov. 4, 2011. (more)

Abbottabad - How did they do it?

Revelations that American spies monitored Osama bin Laden from a safehouse for months before last Sunday's special forces raid have caused further consternation inside Pakistan, where the military is already fighting angry criticism.

CIA agents sequestered in a rented house conducted extensive surveillance on Bin Laden's hideout using an arsenal of high-tech surveillance equipment including telephoto lenses, eavesdropping equipment and radars to detect possible escape tunnels. (more)

One More Step Closer to Mind Eavesdropping

Less spooky than it sounds, but a concept which could be applied to more than just Hello Kitty ears...

(Japanese English from their web site.)

People think that our body has limitation, however just imagine if we have organs that doesn’t exist, moreover we can control that new body? We created new human’s organs that use brain wave sensor. (more)

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“Neurowear” has developed a product called “necomimi” which takes brain signals from our emotions and turns them into visible actions rendering them in the form of wiggling cat ears.

Advertising it as a new communication tool that “augments the human body and ability”, the website introduces the product as a fashion item and gadget that uses brainwaves and other biosensors. Designed obviously for the cutesy Japanese market with its cat ear shape (neco and mimi being the words for cat and ear) the ears mimic a cat’s ears as they wiggle and rise with the wearers emotional state, for example rising in anticipation of eating a delicious cookie, or drop down when relaxed. (more)

Ok, stop laughing. Can't you see a version of this being mandated in classrooms so teachers can tell at a glance who's not paying attention? :)