Darwin Award - Surveillance Swipping Snitch Stunned when Caught

IL - An Alton man who was supposed to be helping investigators in an undercover probe now is now accused of making off with electronic surveillance equipment worth thousands of dollars. 

Twenty-seven-year-old William Cole is charged with felony theft and criminal damage to government property.

Investigators tell The (Alton) Telegraph that Cole was working with detectives on an undercover drug buy Monday when he allegedly bolted with the equipment.

Cole was found Tuesday at an Alton home and arrested by an officer who used a stun gun to stop him from fleeing. (more)

Staff Bugs & Wiretaps at South Africa Techno University

South Africa - The Tshwane University of Technology’s investigation into the illegal tapping of staff phones, in which top campus officials have been implicated, has claimed its first dismissal. The suspended head of internal audit at TUT, Vincent Dlamini, is being fired by the university after being found to have been involved in the “conspiracy”...

Dlamini was also found guilty of unlawful conduct, gross dishonesty, non-compliance with TUT policy, gross negligence, and actions that caused a breakdown in the relationship of trust between the employer and himself as a senior employee...
 

The bugging of the offices of senior managers at TUT was uncovered during Mosia’s investigation into the university’s affairs. Dlamini was among several officials who were suspended on disciplinary charges relating to the bugging. (more)

Fun Fact: Private Investigations on the Rise in India

India's Assn. of Private Detectives and Investigators has 1,200 members, up from 13 in 2005. Much of the industry's business involves premarital investigations. Growing demand spurred the recent opening of Kolkata's Anapol Institute, said to be India's first private-detective school. (more)

"We do Private Investigation either in Kitchen or in Bedroom or anywhere with evidence. We use all available modern Electronic Gadgets." Quote from a local agency.

FutureWatch: The rise of TSCM services.

"What say, you, we go out on the town and swing, baby? Yeah! "

He set up shop as a corporate security consultant, offering his dubious “operational experience” in intelligence to solve delicate problems for customers working in dangerous places...

Some people knew him as Kevin. He told others he was Richard. Everyone could see he had money to burn, and most people thought he was a British spy...

For about three years, until 2008, Halligen spent hundreds of thousands of dollars living large in Washington. He stayed in a Willard Hotel suite for months at a time and drank the days away at pricey Georgetown restaurants. He traveled everywhere in a chauffeur-driven Lincoln Town Car, set up high-tech offices in Herndon and bought a grand home in Great Falls.

Smart, charming and favoring black turtlenecks and sunglasses, Halligen told everyone that he was a spy, or a former spy, or connected to spies. He told friends that he was under such deep cover that he took over his fiancee’s place as a “safe house.”... (more)

Jersey Sure - Encrypted & Self-Destructing iPhone Email

Encryption is meant to keep your messages secret from any third-party eavesdropper–what security pros call a “man-in-the-middle” attack. 

But what about that more common problem, the man-on-the-other-end? Even trusted recipients of a message, photo or video can leak secrets, carelessly forward messages, let them fall into the wrong hands, or even betray the sender and dig up evidence years later–a lesson folks like Anthony Weiner and Adrian Lamo have illustrated all too clearly.

Wickr, a free application that launched in the iPhone app store Wednesday, aims to encrypt text, picture and video messages to prevent their interception by men-in-the-middle. But then, as the app’s name implies, those messages also delete themselves after just minutes or even seconds like a burning wick, leaving no trace behind even for forensic investigators. “We want to let people send messages that are easy, secure, and leave no trace,” says Robert Statica, one of the company’s founders and director of Center for Information Protection at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. (more)

Interesting: Radar Tracks Your Sleep, Then Wakes You Up

via Robert E. Calem, techlicious.com
...there's a new alarm clock available that was designed to help you avoid sleep inertia by monitoring your sleep cycles—without a wearable sensor—and waking you up only when you're sleeping most lightly. It's called the Renew SleepClock by Gear4 ($199.95 on gear4.com) and combines a motion sensing iOS-device docking station-clock radio with a dedicated app that both wakes you and tracks your sleep habits over time. 

The hardware transmits two channels of 10GHz radio frequency signals in a 45-degree beam. These signals bounce off your body and are received back at the device by a sensor, which then processes them and passes the data to the app. 

The app uses the data to discern your breathing pattern and monitor your movements. Based on these interpretations, the app knows when you've fallen asleep, how long you've slept, when you're sleeping lightly or deeply, and when your sleep has been interrupted (for example, when you get out of bed for a 2 AM bathroom break). 

In the morning, the app uses all the captured data to determine the best time to wake you up within a one-hour time slot that you've preset in one of two built-in alarms. (more)

MI5 Encounters and Counters "Astonishing" Levels of Cyber-Attacks

UK - MI5 is working to counter "astonishing" levels of cyber-attacks on UK industry, the organisation's chief has said.

In his first public speech for two years, Jonathan Evans warned internet "vulnerabilities" were being exploited by criminals as well as states...

In the speech on Monday night, Mr Evans spoke of MI5's efforts to tackle "industrial-scale processes involving many thousands of people lying behind both state sponsored cyber espionage and organised cyber crime".

"Vulnerabilities in the internet are being exploited aggressively not just by criminals but also by states," he said. "The extent of what is going on is astonishing." (more)

Businesses beware...

Cyber attacks by a foreign state resulted in a British company losing £800m ($1,247 million) in revenue, the head of MI5 revealed yesterday.  

This "was not just through intellectual property loss but also from commercial disadvantage in contractual negotiations", said Jonathan Evans. "They will not be the only corporate victims." (more)

It's not just in the UK, even tiny Malta has problems...

Malta - The government’s IT agency deals with about 100 cyber-attacks a month, attempts to retrieve information from the government’s online infrastructure. (more)

Teacher's Threat - Professor accused of bugging colleague's office

TX - A professor with the University of Texas-Pan American is free on a personal recognizance bond after being accused of planting a recording device in a colleague’s office.

FutureWatch: New office decor for college professors.

UTPA police arrested chemistry professor Hassan Ahmad on Thursday, according to a news release from the university. Ahmad appeared before an Edinburg municipal judge who formally charged him with one count of unlawful interception, use or disclosure of wire, oral or electronic communication and set a $20,000 personal recognizance bond. The charge is a second-degree felony, punishable by a prison term of two to 20 years and a fine of up to $10,000 upon conviction. The investigation began June 8 after another faculty member discovered a recording device in his office... (more)

Business Espionage - Saab Exec Cell Bugged

The head of Swedish defence group Saab alleged on Friday that his cell phone had been bugged repeatedly during negotiations with Switzerland over Saab's sale of 22 Gripen fighter jets.

"I am closely watched and I know that my cell phone has been bugged on several occasions. Text messages have also been sent from my cell phone, in both Swedish and English, on various occasions and to various contacts," Saab chief executive Haakan Buskhe told Sweden's Svenska Dagbladet in an interview.

He suggested he was a target of industrial espionage, but did not identify by name the people or companies which may have been behind the action. (more)

Western Australia Mining Company Reportedly Bugged

Australia - In the past week the buzz around Perth business circles has been that a WA mining company swept its offices recently and found a bug... 

It's the latest variant of other rumours: a cable with a microphone found behind the secretary's photocopier, or a USB device plugged into a computer to record keystrokes to hopefully purloin top secret codes.

Sorting fact from fiction in the shadowy world is tricky, with few executives willing to go on the record in what is an understandably sensitive area... (more)

Bikie TSCM... Fail

Australia - Paranoid Queensland criminals are hiring security experts to sweep their houses for bugs and other hidden police surveillance equipment, leaving detectives frustrated.

They can also buy sophisticated "bug detection" kits, noise generators, hidden camera scanners and phone tap detectors online and in-store for as little as $450.

While police spend months planning operations involving placement of listening devices, their targets can order kits that allow them to identify suspicious points and keep their clandestine activities under even closer wraps.

Bikie gangs, such as the notorious Finks, previously have used security experts to check their homes. (more)

Law enforcement loves stories like these. The more Bikie gangs (motorcycle gangs) rely on spy shop devices and less-than-ethical sweepers, the greater the Bikie's false sense of security. Easy collar. How do we know? The case went to court.

Court documents describe Finks member Tama Lewis talking, in 2008, about enlisting security firm OzSpy to sweep his home...

Business Espionage - Blueprint Blues to Reds

A previously unknown cyber worm preying on machinery blueprints has been exposed in Latin America. The new virus steals the blueprints and sends them to e-mail accounts registered in China. A number of machines in the US have been infected.

The worm dubbed ACAD/Medre.A targets the AutoCAD program used by architects, engineers, project managers and designers to create blueprints, including machines, buildings, household appliances and other inventions...

“ACAD/Medre.A is a serious example of suspected industrial espionage,” said Richard Zweinenberg, senior research fellow at ESET. (more)

"As always, should you or any of your Walmart Force be caught or killed, the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions."

A public relations officer linked to Walmart posed as a journalist at a press conference held by a labor group highlighting tough working conditions in the warehouses that supply big retailers. 

Stephanie Harnett, a publicist working for Mercury Communications, which has been retained by Walmart to assist in its effort to open a new store in the Chinatown area of Los Angeles, claimed to be a student journalist called "Zoe Mitchell" when she turned up at the event on 6 June.

She then spoke to and recorded an interview with an activist from Warehouse Workers United...

The subterfuge only became apparent on Wednesday, when Harnett turned up at a different event and this time used her real name. She was spotted by members of WWU who recognised her and were stunned to see her handing out Mercury business cards with a completely different identity.

Walmart moved to distance itself from her actions on Thursday, and Mercury said neither it nor the retail giant had "approved, authorized or directed" her actions. It said she was no longer working for the firm. (more) (audio from the disclaimer experts)

Chinese Upgrade Eavesdropping Center

China has upgraded a key eavesdropping site in southeastern Fujian province opposite Taiwan, according to images taken by new commercial satellites, a U.S. weekly reported Monday.

Defense News reported from Taipei that according to an analysis of the high-definition satellite photos, the facility on Dongjing Shan, near Daqiu village in Fujian province, has been upgraded and can now cover all of Taiwan and even a U.S. base in Okinawa.

With the recent release of high resolution imagery of Google Earth and Terraserver, electronic intelligence specialists said they have spotted parabolic dishes not seen in previous lower resolution imagery from non-classified sources. (More)

...and then Canada's Privacy Commissioner heard about it!

Canada - The federal government has hit the pause button on its plan to eavesdrop at border points after confirmation Tuesday that some travelers at the Halifax airport were secretly recorded.

Privacy commissioner Jennifer Stoddart

But there were still many unanswered questions about the surveillance plan.

Public Safety Minister Vic Toews said he has told the Canada Border Services Agency to place audio monitoring on hold until a study of the privacy implications is complete. (more)