Security Director Tip: Prepare here... before it hits the fan.

In any enterprise, stuff happens. When you hear about it, it is probably bad stuff.
Here's a great resource to prevent some of the bad stuff from happening - and to deal effectively with the consequences of the bad stuff that can't be prevented. 

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Thousands of Industrial Systems Unwittingly Hooked Up to Internet 

New Models for Addressing Supply Chain and Transport Risk 

Solar flare impacts life on Earth 

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1960's - 1980's Spy Satellites Now Museum Pieces

Three formerly classified spy satellites went on public display Thursday at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force, in Dayton, Ohio.

The satellites -- Gambit 1 KH-7, Gambit 3 KH-8 and Hexagon KH-9 -- were among the most important U.S. photo reconnaissance systems from the 1960s to the 1980s, according to an Air Force report. They used specially-designed film and cameras to take photos from orbit. (more)

SpyCam Story #644 - The Faculty Restroom Can Cam

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)

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

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.

Just coincidence?

Prosecutors said Keady put a pen camera in the ceiling above a women's restroom stall, and recorded other workers in offices more than 100 times, using pen devices, video cameras and a baby monitor. He also allegedly broke into one home four times. (more)

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)

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!

Minh Uong/The New York Times

Chuck Bokath would be terrifying if he were not such a nice guy. A jovial senior engineer at the Georgia Tech Research Institute in Atlanta, Mr. Bokath can hack into your cellphone just by dialing the number. He can remotely listen to your calls, read your text messages, snap pictures with your phone’s camera and track your movements around town — not to mention access the password to your online bank account.

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)

Kessler Investigates Cell Phone Spy Apps

In a six month investigation of illegal spying Kessler International’s forensic team found that most smartphones can be used for conducting unlawful spying and assisting criminals obtain information to conduct identity theft.

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)

Google Oggle is in your Face-book

In a move that could make it harder for its users to remain anonymous, Google said it would start combining nearly all the information it has on its users.

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)

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)

FutureWatch: Civilian use of trackers to be outlawed. Like electronic eavesdropping, what can be done naturally becomes illegal when electronically enhanced.

On-line Spies - Affordable, and easy to find.

...documents filed in two civil cases suggests just how simple and affordable online espionage has become. Computer forensic specialists say some hackers-for-hire openly market themselves online. "It's not hard to find hackers," says Mikko Hyppönen of computer-security firm F-Secure Corp.

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)