AR - A former Lavaca Middle School science teacher received a five-year suspended sentence Wednesday after pleading guilty in Sebastian County Circuit Court to video voyeurism.
Michael Allen Clark, 44, was arrested May 20 after he admitted to an Arkansas State Police investigator that he placed a school-issued video camera in the faculty restroom at the middle school, according to a police report.
The camera was discovered by a custodian in a wicker basket, on a shelf located in front of the toilet in the bathroom. The custodian turned it over to Jerri Schaffer, a math teacher at the middle school. (more)
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Weekend Project - OTS Some Spy Gear for $50. or less
DARPA-Funded Hacker's Tiny $50 Spy Computer Hides In Offices, Drops From Drones
Security researcher Brendan O’Connor is trying a different approach to spy hardware: building a sensor-equipped surveillance-capable computer that’s so cheap it can be sacrificed after one use, with off-the-shelf parts that anyone can buy and assemble for less than fifty dollars.
...the F-BOMB is designed to be a platform for all sorts of applications on its Linux operating system. Outfit it with temperature or humidity sensors, for instance, and it can be used for meteorological research or other innocent data-collecting. But install some Wifi-cracking software or add a $15 GPS module, and it can snoop on data networks or track a target’s location, O’Connor adds.
One version attaches to the Parrot Drone, an iPhone-controllable quadcopter, sucking power off the drone’s rechargeable battery and allowing the user to hover over a target, land it on a roof, or drop the F-BOMB from a hook attachment on the drone. Another version fits inside a carbon monoxide detector, and can be plugged into a wall socket to hide in plain sight inside a target’s building. (more)
SpyCam Story #643 - The Town Hall Spy
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| Shirley Town Hall |
MA - A former Shirley town administrator has pleaded guilty to charges that he videotaped female employees in a town hall restroom, and also secretly wiretapped and spied on other town workers.
Middlesex District Attorney Gerard Leone said Kyle Keady pleaded guilty Friday in superior court in Woburn and was sentenced to three years in prison, followed by seven years' probation. Keady was fired after he was charged in 2010.
He pleaded guilty to charges including video recording a person in a state of nudity, wiretapping and breaking and entering.
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| Just coincidence? |
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Spycam Story #642 - The Epidemic Continues
CT - A man from South Windsor accused of secretly taping people getting undressed is due in court Thursday. Police said Paul Zajac, 20, hid cameras in bathrooms and bedrooms at his home and his ex-girlfriend's house. He is being charged with 24 counts of voyeurism. (more)
FL - A 24-year-old man was arrested Monday on suspicion of using his iPhone to take an upskirt video of a woman using a Redbox outside a Walmart in Lake County. Lorenzo Adan Ramirez, a landscaper and father of two from Tavares, was arrested in Mount Dora on charges of video voyeurism. (more)
Canada - A former Merritt radio personality will go to jail for nine months and be forbidden from being around children for five years after pleading guilty to possessing child pornography and voyeurism. Jamie McDerment, a small and slightly built 24-year-old man, was led away in handcuffs by two sheriffs Friday afternoon after being sentenced in provincial court... Police also found covert images he admitted to taking of young boys partially naked in a bathroom at Riverside park in August. (more)
I mention incidents like this to raise public awareness of the increase in optical surveillance, and to encourage new laws to address the situation.
Spycam Story #641 - The Church Sleepover
TX - Charges have been upgraded against the Haughton man arrested Sunday after law-enforcement officers learned he placed video cameras in a bathroom used by teenage girls over the weekend.
Paul E. Holmes, 55, of the 700 block of Opal Circle in Haughton, has now been charged with 16 counts of video voyeurism and four counts of production of child pornography.
Police learned Sunday that Holmes had positioned video cameras in one the bathrooms of his house that was used by teenage girls during a sleepover as part of a local church youth activity.
When one of the girls was in the bathroom, she noticed a camera, told her parents, who then provided the information to the Haughton Police Department. When questioned by police, Holmes admitted that he owned the video cameras that were placed in the bathroom that the girls were using. (more)
Paul E. Holmes, 55, of the 700 block of Opal Circle in Haughton, has now been charged with 16 counts of video voyeurism and four counts of production of child pornography. Police learned Sunday that Holmes had positioned video cameras in one the bathrooms of his house that was used by teenage girls during a sleepover as part of a local church youth activity.
When one of the girls was in the bathroom, she noticed a camera, told her parents, who then provided the information to the Haughton Police Department. When questioned by police, Holmes admitted that he owned the video cameras that were placed in the bathroom that the girls were using. (more)
Spycam Story #640 - Epiphany Party at My Place!
Sault Ste. Marie, MI - Investigation Services officers arrested 48 year-old Emmanuel De Melo of 7 Elmwood Avenue on the 24th of January at 11:10 am at the police station and charged him with one count of voyeurism. It is alleged that between the 1st to the 12th of January 2012, the accused used video cameras to record a number of persons that used his bathroom area while they were at gatherings at his residence.
The victims were unaware that the recordings were occurring. (more)
Quik! Hide the Bloodhound
Switzerland - Lawyers for anti-globalization activists at ATTAC went head-to-head with Nestlé lawyers for a second day in the civil spying trial in Lausanne. Nestlé admits it hired a Securitas agent to spy on activists at ATTAC.The company says it is a symbol of globalization that is vulnerable to attacks and the victim of an “ideological war.” Nestlé attorneys argue that it was within its rights to know what was happening in activist circles...
Both sides now await a judgment. (more)
Chucky is Back... and He Owns Your Cell Phone!
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| Minh Uong/The New York Times |
And while Mr. Bokath’s job is to expose security flaws in wireless devices, he said it was “trivial” to hack into a cellphone. Indeed, the instructions on how to do it are available online (the link most certainly will not be provided here). “It’s actually quite frightening,” said Mr. Bokath. “Most people have no idea how vulnerable they are when they use their cellphones.” (more)
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Kessler Investigates Cell Phone Spy Apps
In order to test how dangerous your smartphone has become with a simple installation of readily available software from the Internet, Kessler International’s staff purchased a variety of smart phones and installed a variety of popular cell phone spy apps to discover what dangers the software posed and if traces of the apps could be detected by mobile forensic engineers to reveal their existence.
Kessler’s experts tested the products of the major smartphone spyware software providers on BlackBerry, iPhone and a variety of the Android devices. The team of forensic experts then reverse engineered the installation of the software to see how covert the app would be. In every case Kessler found telltale traces of the spyware in every product tested.
Michael G. Kessler, President & CEO of Kessler International stated, “Despite the best efforts of the developers to make their spyware as furtive as possible, my team determined that in every case not one spy app tested could make itself completely invisible. That gives the victims of spyware an important edge in proving their suspicions that their privacy has been invaded.” (more)
Wiretapping Uncovered In The Mexican Congress
Mexican lawmakers said they would formally complain to the attorney general's office Tuesday after finding hidden microphones believed to have been used to spy on the lower house of Congress.
The listening devices were found "in quite a lot of offices, listening to and checking the activities of lawmakers," said Armando Rios Piter, president of the house's political coordination committee, on Televisa channel.
It was unclear who was responsible but lawmakers would release further information when possible, a statement from the lower chamber said. (more)
The listening devices were found "in quite a lot of offices, listening to and checking the activities of lawmakers," said Armando Rios Piter, president of the house's political coordination committee, on Televisa channel.
It was unclear who was responsible but lawmakers would release further information when possible, a statement from the lower chamber said. (more)
Google Oggle is in your Face-book
This could mean, for instance, that when users search via Google, the company will use their activities on sister sites like Gmail and YouTube to influence those users' search results. Google has not done that before.
Google's move -- which was disclosed in a privacy policy that will take effect on March 1 -- is a sign of the fierce competition between Google and Facebook over personal data. Facebook has amassed an unprecedented amount of data about the lives of its more than 800 million members -- information that is coveted by advertisers. (more)
Monday, January 23, 2012
Supreme Court Rules Trackers Require Warrant
The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday that police must get a search warrant before using GPS technology to track criminal suspects. Associate Justice Antonin Scalia said that the government's installation of a GPS device, and its use to monitor the vehicle's movements, constitutes a search, meaning that a warrant is required.
"By attaching the device to the Jeep" that Jones was using, "officers encroached on a protected area," Scalia wrote.
All nine justices agreed that the placement of the GPS on the Jeep violated the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable search and seizure. (more)
On-line Spies - Affordable, and easy to find.
One such site, hiretohack.net (ignore log-in), advertises online services including being able to "crack" passwords for major email services in less than 48 hours. It says it charges a minimum of $150, depending on the email provider, the password's complexity and the urgency of the job. The site describes itself as a group of technology students based in Europe, U.S. and Asia.
Mischel Kwon, who runs a security-consulting firm and is the former director of the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team, a government organization known as US-CERT, says the hacker-for-hire industry is well established. Some are one- or two-person outfits, but there are also larger "organized crime" groups," she said. She and other specialists note that it is also easy to find tools online that assist in hacking into someone's email. (more)
Security Director Alert: Eavesdropping via Video Teleconferencing
Covertly eavesdropping on boardroom chit chat using the teleconferencing system is not new. We've been demonstrating (and correcting) this problem for our clients for years. The vulnerability, however, has finally received some publicity.
Result: Expect more attempts to access video teleconferencing systems.
Recommendations: Turn off the autoanswer feature on your teleconferencing system. Make sure your system is behind a firewall.
FREE offer: The full Murray Associates Video Teleconferencing Security Checklist is available to corporate security directors (only) at no charge. Contact me here, and get our Off-Site Meeting Checklist, too!.
via The New York Times...
One afternoon this month, a hacker took a tour of a dozen conference rooms around the globe via equipment that most every company has in those rooms; videoconferencing equipment...the hacker was HD Moore, a chief security officer at Rapid7, a Boston based company that looks for security holes in computer systems...Mr. Moore has found it easy to get into several top venture capital and law firms, pharmaceutical and oil companies and courtrooms across the country...
“These are literally some of the world’s most important boardrooms — this is where their most critical meetings take place — and there could be silent attendees in all of them.”
New systems are outfitted with a feature that automatically accepts inbound calls so users do not have to press an “accept” button every time someone dials into their videoconference. The effect is that anyone can dial in and look around a room, and the only sign of their presence is a tiny light on a console unit, or the silent swing of a video camera.
Two months ago, Mr. Moore wrote a computer program that scanned the Internet for videoconference systems that were outside the firewall and configured to automatically answer calls. In less than two hours, he had scanned 3 percent of the Internet.
In that sliver, he discovered 5,000 wide-open conference rooms at law firms, pharmaceutical companies, oil refineries, universities and medical centers. He stumbled into a lawyer-inmate meeting room at a prison, an operating room at a university medical center, and a venture capital pitch meeting where a company’s financials were being projected on a screen.
Among the vendors that popped up in Mr. Moore’s scan were Polycom, Cisco, LifeSize, Sony and others. Of those, Polycom — which leads the videoconferencing market in units sold — was the only manufacturer that ships its equipment — from its low-end ViewStation models to its high-end HDX products — with the auto-answer feature enabled by default. (more)
Friday, January 20, 2012
More NOTW Phone Hacking News
According to a report Friday in the British newspaper The Telegraph, a News Corp. division in the UK faces an investigation by the FBI into whether the now-defunct Murdoch tabloid News of the World hacked into a phone on U.S. soil. (more)
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