App Scam: Top Ranked Anti-Spyware App Removed from Google Play

Until Sunday night, the top new paid app on the Google Play store was a complete scam. Google Inc. quickly removed “Virus Shield” from the Google Play store, but not before thousands of people downloaded the fake anti-malware app, exposing a major flaw in the open strategy Google has taken with its mobile app marketplace.

"Virus Shield" claimed that it protected Android smartphone users from viruses, malware and spyware, and that it even improved the speed of phones. It touted its minimal impact on battery life and its additional functionality as an ad blocker. At only $3.99, "Virus Shield" sounded like a pretty good deal to the tens of thousands of people who downloaded it in less than two weeks. 

 
Virus Shield downloads Google Play Store (screenshot by Android Police)

Those 10,000 people even seemed to enjoy "Virus Shield," as the app maintained a 4.7-star rating from about 1,700 users. Another 2,607 users recommended it on the Google Play store, helping “Virus Shield” get ranked as the No. 1 new paid app and third overall top paid app. (more)

Coming soon to Google Play, something that really works.

Red Flag - Doing Business in China? Using Your Intellectual Property? Take Note...

Knowles, a supplier of microphones to Apple and Samsung Electronics, said its lawyers were shut out of court proceedings in an intellectual property suit filed by a Chinese rival, highlighting the uncertainties foreign companies can face in China’s legal system.

Itasca, Ill.-based Knowles is the world’s largest supplier of micro-electrical-mechanical systems (MEMS) microphones, which are widely used in smartphones. The company has a factory in Suzhou, near Shanghai. Since 2012, Knowles has faced stronger competition from business with Apple from Chinese competitors Goertek and AAC Technology Holdings. Knowles and Goertek have been locked in legal battles in the U.S. and China since June, with each accusing the other of patent infringements...

Knowles said Wednesday the Weifang Intermediate People’s Court in China denied its lawyers access to the courthouse as the trial against Goertek proceeded on March 31.

“The Weifang Court’s decision to bar Knowles from the legal proceedings makes a fair trial impossible,” said Knowles Chief Executive Jeffrey Niew.

Intellectual property has long been a major issue for foreign companies that operate in China...

Lawyers in China said the situation Knowles is alleging is unusual and raises questions of whether other companies could face such a situation. (more)

If You Don't Sweep, Don't Try to Sweep it Under the Rug When it Happens

Days after the chief financial officer of a Tampa maintenance company was accused of recording videos of female employees using the bathroom and showering, the former information technology employee who exposed the chief financial officer's alleged actions has sued the company and his ex-boss.

On March 28, Jeremy Lenkowski, the former information technology director for MaintenX , filed a lawsuit accusing the company's president and vice president, among others, of failing to act after Lenkowski showed them videos he'd discovered on CFO James Stanton Jr.'s laptop in 2010. (more)

Nearly Invisible, Lens-Free Camera is the Future of Spying

The camera modules used in today's smartphones are typically pretty small, as you can see from the image below. However if you look to the left, you'll see something even smaller that's set to be the future of spying.  

Researchers at Rambus have developed a miniscule camera with a 200 micron (µm) sensor, which is smaller than the tip of a pencil. It's also completely lens-free, with the tiny sensor mapping out light signals before a processor compiles the data into a viewable image. (more)

Sports Spying (aka business espionage): Spying on Earthquakes

Mexico's Deportivo Toluca has been handed a $5,000 fine by CONCACAF's disciplinary committee for spying on a San Jose Earthquakes training session.

San Jose Earthquakes claimed that Toluca had filmed, without authorization, parts of a closed training session on March 18 at Estadio Nemesio Diez, before the return leg of their Champions League quarter final...

The Mexican/US spygate scandal is not the first time one club has been caught illegally watching another's training session. 

In a slightly more light-hearted incident in Italy last year a coach from Genoa was caught "spying" on local rivals Sampdoria of their derby clash. The agent was dressed in Rambo-style camouflage and hiding in the training ground bushes.

Sampdoria said in a statement he was hiding "like Rambo" but "failed to overcome Sampdoria's intelligence and counter-intelligence operations". (more)

Moral: Have a counter-intelligence strategy. Professional counterespionage help here.

Privacy: On-line Search Privacy Options

Explore services that allow you to search online without compromising your privacy.

Covert Video Nails Greek Politico

The Greek prime minister’s chief political adviser has resigned over a secretly filmed video in which he allegedly says the government was behind a judicial clampdown on the far-right. Panayiotis Baltakos was reportedly filmed last autumn during a meeting at the Greek parliament with an MP from the ultra-nationalist Golden Dawn party. (more)

Murray Security Tip #416 - Evil Photo Double Extension Trick

                     Isn't this the cutest kitty?

Click CuteKitty.jpg to enlarge.

DON'T CLICK, it might be the old double extension trick. 

Although this photo does NOT contain a virus, others might.

Many Windows computers will display emailed CuteKitty.jpg.exe – an executable program – as CuteKitty.jpg – which seems harmless.

When you click, you might be shown a cute kitty... while a virus is loading in the background.

Tip 1 - Don't click on stuff if you don't know where it has been. 
Tip 2 - If you want to click anyway, open Windows search; enter "folder options"; select Folder Options; View tab, uncheck "Hide extensions for known file types." Check for the double extension trick.

Privacy - The Diamond Principle

Privacy is a multifaceted gem. Like a diamond, the sum of its part is what makes the whole. Lose clarity, lose value. Lose the right color, lose value. Lose weight, lose value.

Electronic surveillance privacy is only one facet of your privacy diamond. Get to know the folks make up some of privacy's other angles...

Why Is Privacy So Damn Important Anyway?
Privacy is so much more than the right to keep information secret within yourself. It provides the right to express yourself and expose yourself within small groups of trusted associates precisely because confidentiality is respected within the group. The current collection of online executives belittle privacy as no longer relevant in the new digital age. And they are precisely the ones who protect their privacy with the most vehemence. Look how revealing Mark Zuckerberg is not, on his own Facebook page. He sued in Massachusetts to keep information about his career secret.

Privacy is essential for mental health, for a quality of life. And so it is not about whether you “don’t have anything to hide.” It’s about all of us, and the value to society in having autonomous, assertive individuals with the opportunity to learn and take risks and make good decisions in dignity and uninterrupted contemplation. Call it privacy. 

~Robert Ellis Smith, author / publisher, expert witness on privacy, credit reporting, surveillance, medical confidentiality, Social Security numbers, and identity theft. Keep current on privacy topics with his newsletter Privacy Journal, and all of his books. (more) 

Ultimate Privacy... How to Become Invisible.
In 1959, J. J. (Jack) Luna sold his outdoor advertising business in the Upper Midwest and moved with his wife and small children to the Canary Islands off the coast of West Africa. Outwardly, he was a professional writer and photographer. Secretly, he worked underground in an activity that was at that time illegal under the regime of Generalissimo Francisco Franco.

In 1970 Franco yielded to intense pressure from the western world and moderated Spain's laws, leaving Luna free to come in from the cold. By that time, however, privacy had become an ingrained habit. In the years that followed he started up various one-person low-profile businesses, built them up and then sold them.

Luna is especially interested in designing and building secret spaces and hiding places. He currently has a 3300-square foot three-level safe house for sale that is set in an almost-invisible location despite being within city limits. The exterior is complete but the interior is unfinished, awaiting a buyer who will decide which spaces or rooms are to have secret entrances. The approximate price, when finished according the buyer’s instructions, will be $795,000, plus (if desired) the cost of a secret escape tunnel into the adjoining forest. The location is in the Pacific Northwest. (...or so we are told. Remember, we are dealing with the Invisible Man here.) (more)
~JJ Luna, International Privacy Consultant, and author — How to Become Invisible.

Smartphone kill-switch could save consumers $2.6 billion per year...

...and why you will probably never see it.
Technology that remotely makes a stolen smartphone useless could save American consumers up to $2.6 billion per year if it is implemented widely and leads to a reduction in theft of phones, according to a new report...

Americans currently spend around $580 million replacing stolen phones each year and $4.8 billion paying for handset insurance... (more)

Do you really think phone and insurance companies are going to kill this goose?

Nikola Tesla Redux - Wireless Power Finally Arrives

via one of our top Canadian Blue Blaze irregulars...

TODAY
"We're going to transfer power without any kind of wires," says Dr Hall, now Chief Technology Officer at WiTricity, a startup developing wireless "resonance" technology.

"But, we're not actually putting electricity in the air. What we're doing is putting a magnetic field in the air." ...

In the house of the future, wire-free energy transfer could be as easy as wireless internet.

If all goes to WiTricity's plans, smartphones will charge in your pocket as you wander around, televisions will flicker with no wires attached, and electric cars will refuel while sitting on the driveway. (more)

YESTERDAY
In 1891, Nikola Tesla gave a lecture for the members of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers in New York City, where he made a striking demonstration. In each hand he held a gas discharge tube, an early version of the modern fluorescent bulb. The tubes were not connected to any wires, but nonetheless they glowed brightly during his demonstration. Tesla explained to the awestruck attendees that the electricity was being transmitted through the air by the pair of metal sheets which sandwiched the stage. He went on to speculate how one might increase the scale of this effect to transmit wireless power and information over a broad area, perhaps even the entire Earth. As was often the case, Tesla's audience was engrossed but bewildered. (more)

TOMORROW
No more replacing batteries in wireless bugging devices, voice recorders and spycams! 

Interesting side note... Leon Theremin invented a wireless bugging device that didn't need batteries back in the 1940's. (more)

FCC Frees More Bandwidth - Wireless Eavesdropping Becomes Harder to Detect

The Federal Communications Commission approved measures on Monday that will free up more airwaves for Wi-Fi and wireless broadband...

Unlike the airwaves used for mobile phone traffic, which are licensed to a specific company, unlicensed spectrum can be used by anyone. Previous establishments of unlicensed airwaves led to innovations like garage-door openers, baby monitors, wireless microphones* and Wi-Fi networks. (more)

* Want to hear a Broadway play, live, for free? Park your butt near any Broadway theater at showtime. Bring along a scanning radio receiver and search for the wireless microphones. This trick will work in most other cities as well, as long as the wireless microphones are using frequency modulation (FM). Most still do.

The same trick works near Boardrooms, and hotel conference centers...

The Tale of the Eavesdropping Husbands, or Peek-A-Boo, SEC You

A man is being charged with violating a duty of trust by trading during a blackout window after he overheard work calls made by his wife.

“Spouses and other family members may gain access to highly confidential information about public companies as part of their relationship of trust,” said Jina L. Choi, director of the SEC’s San Francisco Regional Office. “In those circumstances, family members have a duty to protect and safeguard that information, not to trade on it.”

Tyrone Hawk of Los Gatos, Calif., overheard his wife, a finance manager at multinational computer technology corporation Oracle Corp speaking of her company’s plan to acquire Acme Packet Inc. Hawk also had a conversation with his wife in which she informed him that there was a blackout window for trading Oracle securities because it was in the process of acquiring another company, the SEC said.

In an unrelated case, the SEC alleges that Ching Hwa Chen of San Jose, Calif., profited from gleaning confidential information in mid-2012 that his wife’s employer, Informatica Corp., would miss its quarterly earnings target for the first time in 31 consecutive quarters. During a drive to vacation in Reno, Nev., Chen overheard business calls by his wife, who previously advised Chen not to trade in Informatica securities under any circumstances. (more)

P.S.
Hawk agreed to pay more than $300,000 to settle the SEC’s charges.
Chen agreed to pay approximately $280,000 to settle the SEC’s charges.

Business Espionage: Invisibility & Examples of Tactics

There are three primary reasons that we don't hear more about corporate espionage:

1. Because businesses often don’t realize they’ve been compromised. 
2. If they do find out, a public announcement would be counterproductive, eroding investor confidence. 
3. Finally, industrial espionage works both ways — companies may keep compromises quiet to preserve their own business intelligence gathering activities.

Five recent court cases highlighting business espionage tactics...

• Buying Trade Secrets
• Digging Up Dirt, Literally
• Employee Poaching
• Classified Ads
• Cyber Theft

Click on more for all the details. (more)

Murray Security Tip # 415 - iPhone - The Spy in Your Pocket

Did you know, your iPhone keeps track of where you go? 

Check it out. Buried deep in your Settings menu is the proof. To see it, navigate this path:

• Settings
• Privacy
• Location Services
• System Services
• Frequent Locations
• History

WOW! Locations, dates, times, number of visits, and a map!
You can turn it off and clear the history.
One more reason to use quality password protection.
~Kevin