Keystroke-sniffing software found embedded in Nokia, Android, and RIM devices

A piece of keystroke-sniffing software called Carrier IQ has been embedded so deeply in millions of Nokia, Android, and RIM devices that it’s tough to spot and nearly impossible to remove, as 25-year old Connecticut systems administrator Trevor Eckhart revealed in a video Tuesday.

That’s not just creepy, says Paul Ohm, a former Justice Department prosecutor and law professor at the University of Colorado Law School. He thinks it’s also likely grounds for a class action lawsuit based on a federal wiretapping law...

FutureWatch...“In the next days or weeks, someone will sue, and then this company is tangled up in very expensive litigation,” he adds. “It’s almost certain.”

Over the last month, Carrier IQ has attempted to quash Eckhart’s research with a cease-and-desist letter, apologizing only after the Electronic Frontier Foundation came to his defense.  (more) (Note: The accompanying movie is 15+ minutes, but is very revealing.)

Want a Job as a Spy? Start with a Code Cracking Quiz! (UPDATED)

UK - No longer content with simply approaching the brightest from the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, intelligence agency GCHQ has launched a code-cracking competition to attract new talent.

Knowing what this is might help.

The electronic surveillance organisation, the UK Government Communications Headquarters, is asking potential applicants to solve a code posted on a website.

It will direct potential candidates to the competition, hosted on an anonymous website, via sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

If the layers of code it has set are cracked, applicants will be presented with a keyword to enter into a form field. They will then be re-directed to the GCHQ website, where hopefuls will find details of the types of roles which could reflect their skills.

The aim is to attract candidates who might not apply through more conventional channels. (more)

UPDATE:
A simple Google search unlocks the supposedly secret completion page to GCHQ's code-cracking competition.

The signals snooping agency launched a codebreaking competition this week, promoted via social networks, that aimed to find would be code breakers that conventional recruitment efforts might miss. The canyoucrackit.co.uk challenge involved making sense of a 16x10 grid of 8-bit hexadecimal numbers to figure out a password, and then developing a virtual machine to execute code that would lead to the final page.

Puzzle-solvers had 10 days to crack the codes. However instead of solving this puzzle, which was not trivial to conquer, at least if some of the emails we've received are any guide, the completion page could be reached via a simple Google search.

Oops.

"All it takes to find the page is to use the site: command in Google, as the 'Can You Crack It?' webmaster seemingly didn't hide the success page from search engines," Graham Cluley of net security firm Sophos explains. (more)

7 Things You Should Know About Online Passwords

Click to enlarge.

1. You need different passwords for each site.

2. Longer passwords are harder to hack.

3. You shouldn’t use a word from the dictionary.

4. Humans tend to choose passwords with personal meanings.

5. Passwords need to be changed regularly.

6. There are guidelines for creating strong ones.

7. Password managers can help you keep track of them all.

Tips for Visiting a Closed Society with Your Electronics

Ken Lieberthal of the Brookings Institution does a lot of work in China. Visiting about 10 times a year...

Like a lot of us these days, Lieberthal carries electronics with him to do his work. However, he takes a bit more precaution than many business travelers, as he tells weekends on All Things Considered guest host Rachel Martin.

"I first of all get a loaner laptop."

"I first of all get a loaner laptop. And the USB that I bring, I clean digitally before I bring it, so it's totally blank," Lieberthal says.

Lieberthal then disconnects the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth functions, sets email filters and a virtual private network, or VPN. That's all before the trip. While in China, he never lets his Blackberry leave his side, never uses a wireless Internet connection while he has his USB drive plugged in, and he also physically hides his fingers when typing passwords.

When he gets home, everything gets digitally wiped and cleaned.
Why take all this precaution? Espionage...

The cloak-and-dagger world of corporate espionage is alive and well, and China seems to have the advantage. Their cyber-espionage program is becoming more and more effective at swiping information from America's public and private sectors. The U.S. government has even blamed China publicly for hacking American industries. (more) 

Visiting closed societies on business? 
This is good advice.
And, there is more you need to know. Call us.

Ex-Rugby Player Probed for Hard-Ball Spying

South Africa - A millionaire Pretoria businessman is at the center of a criminal investigation over the alleged illegal interception of his estranged wife's private e-mails, SMSes and BlackBerry messages, or BBMs.

The hacking was first suspected when Dr Graham Hefer - a former Natal rugby player - filed divorce proceedings against his wife Denise. Court documents in that case seemed to show that Hefer had access to more than 50 BBMs, over a dozen SMSes and at least five e-mails between Denise and others this year.

The case has revealed that the BBM facility, one of the preferred "secure" methods of communication can be hacked with relative ease.

Hefer, 48, the managing director of a Nigeria-based British company, is accused of installing spyware software on 49-year-old Denise's BlackBerry. This type of spyware is readily available.

This is said to have allowed real-time monitoring of her communication and her whereabouts, and for eavesdropping on her private conversations. These included discussions with her lawyer. (more)

Cell Phone Spyware's New Market - from cheating spouse to the kids!

The latest smart phone technology allows worried parents to keep tabs on their children and, unlike previous apps, it remains completely hidden. 

The technology, which has been criticized as an invasion of privacy, is just the latest weapon for "helicopter" parents keeping a short leash on their children, to ensure they are not sexting or hanging out with the wrong crowd.

As one program's website warns: "Are your kids involved with texting dangers? What are they secretly texting about? Are they visiting porn sites on the phone? You have the right to know."

The latest programs to hit the market, Spyera Software and Mobile Spy, offer stealth GPS tracking and the abilities to read text messages, read emails and view photos.

Spyera even promises to turn the phone into a "remote bugging device" so parents can listen to conversations wherever the phone is left. (more)

Slovakia: Defence minister fired over wiretapping scandal

Slovakia - Ľubomír Galko, a nominee of the Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) party, has been fired as the country’s defence minister. Slovak Prime Minister Iveta Radičová asked president Ivan Gašparovič to dismiss Galko on the heels of a scandal over the Military Defence Intelligence (VOS), which operates under the Ministry of Defence, and its interception of the telephone calls of journalists. (more)

Very clever, not using the phone cord. That would have been suspicious.

(It appears the reporter got this information from (dumb-de-dumb-dumb) ...the sheriff's deputies.)

FL - A Verizon worker who was able to listen in on his wife's phone calls has been accused of trying to strangle her, Polk County sheriff's deputies said.

Robert L. Rutledge, 51, of Lakeland, works at Verizon as a repair technician, deputies said.

He used his knowledge from his job to listen in on his wife's phone calls Monday, deputies said.

He disconnected the telephone line after hearing a call between his wife and an unknown man, deputies said.

It isn't clear whether Monday was the only time that Rutledge had listened to his wife's calls, deputies said.

Rutledge went home Monday night and removed the phone within his wife's reach. He choked her with a rope until she passed out, deputies said. (more)

Spy History: The Spy Queen Was A Nympho!"

(Feb. 1958) She is Martha Eccels Dodd, daughter of the late Ambassador to Germany William E. Dodd, wife of a Chicago millionaire, Alfred Kaufmann Stern, himself an undercover agent of the Soviet Union...

FLIRTS WITH NAZISM 
Nazism meant good-looking, tall, blond men to her and she liked what she saw. She was painting the Nazi capital red, but in a social way. She went out on the town every night, flirting, drinking and dancing, mostly with young men who happened to be Nazis She gained a dual reputation. Insiders described her as a nymphomaniac in her sex life and a Nazi sympathizer in her politics. (more)

...thus verifying what we feared all along about about media espionage.

Illegal eavesdropping was widely practiced by Britain's tabloid journalists, producing stories that were both intrusive and untrue, a lawyer for several phone hacking victims said Wednesday. 

Mark Lewis told a U.K. media ethics inquiry that phone hacking was not limited to Rupert Murdoch's News of the World tabloid, which the media mogul shut down earlier this year as outrage grew over the hacking scandal.

Lewis claimed that listening in on voice mails was so easy that many journalists regarded it as no more serious than "driving at 35 mph in a 30 mph zone." (more)

...of course, sometimes it's 'The Man' bites 'Dog' story...

Only a day and a half after media reports were published about several journalists being wiretapped by the Military Intelligence Service (VOS), Prime Minister Iveta Radičová moved to dismiss Ľubomír Galko as defense minister, the SME daily reported. (more)

Camerman Leaves Wireless Mic Behind. Eavesdropping or Innocent Mistake?

Police in New Zealand have executed search warrants to obtain material from media organisations as part of their investigation over the so-called teapot tape scandal. 

The saga began a week-and-a-half ago when the media were invited to film prime minister John Key having a cuppa with ACT candidate John Banks, whose party is the second largest in Mr Key's centre-right coalition government.

When media were ushered outside a cameraman left a microphone on the cafe table. Some media outlets now have that recording... Mr Ambrose says he left his radio microphone in a pouch on the cafe table by accident. (more)

FutureWatch Quote

Judge: Accident? If it was in a pouch, not being used, it would have been turned off, right?

FutureWatch - Facebook Phone - Social Notworking Albatrose

via Larry Dignan, zdnet.com

Summary: Your Facebook phone may be the equivalent of having a KGB agent tailing you. Mark Zuckerberg will be in your pocket. You might as well wear one of those ankle bracelets for tracking.

The Facebook phone is in play—again—and it appears we have another 12 to 18 months to go before mobile and social utopia arrives. I can’t wait to see the privacy flaps that emerge from this adventure.

AllThingsD is reporting that Facebook has named HTC to build a phone with the social network at the core. The code name is Buffy because it will allegedly slay the market—or something like that. Sound familiar? The Facebook phone has been rumored forever. TechCrunch reported that Facebook was working to build a phone a year ago. CNET News also reported that Facebook was reaching out to hardware makers...

But do you really want a Facebook phone? If you think the social graph can be overdone today just wait until Facebook starts broadcasting every move to your friends. Every purchase you make. Every app you use. Every time you happen to hit the john with your smartphone in tow your friends will know. I could be exaggerating, but not by much (and you know half of you bring your smartphone to the loo). (more)

Ah ! well a-day ! what evil looks
Had I from old and young !
Instead of the cross, the Albatross
About my neck was hung. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

FutureWatch - New "Baby Monitor" Being Launched

Being tested now...

"The Evoz beta program lets parents use their iPhone and the Evoz baby monitoring service to monitor their babies from anywhere in the world with the touch of a button. 

Evoz has unlimited range and can send smart alerts (call, text, or email) if your baby is crying. Parents can download Evoz from the iTunes Appstore for FREE.

Our beta grants mobile parents early access to the free monitoring service and also offers an extended period of time with advanced capabilities. It is important to note that this is a beta, so we haven’t worked out all the kinks yet. We are counting on our beta users to give us feedback, identify problems, and share ideas with our team as we prepare a full public launch." (more) (more)

FutureWatch - For a lot of people, the cost of this gadget, plus $1.99 per day is a small price to pay for unlimited eavesdropping. Just one more thing your sweep team will need to be aware of.

Security Alert: Check Your Cell Phone

Bit9 researchers has compiled a list of 12 smartphones that pose the highest security and privacy risks to consumers and corporations.

The phones, all Android models, on the "Dirty Dozen" list compiled by Bit9 of Waltham, Mass. are:
Samsung Galaxy Mini
HTC Desire
Sony Ericsson Xperia X10
HTC Wildfire
Samsung Epic 4G
LG Optimus S
Samsung Galaxy S
Motorola Droid X
LG Optimus One
Motorola Droid 2
HTC Evo 4G 

In compiling the list, Bit9 researchers looked at the market share of the smartphone, what out-of-date and insecure software the model had running on it and how long it took for the phone to receive updates.

Read Bit9's full report at http://www.bit9.com/orphan-android/
(more)