Staples Suspects Hackers - That Was Easy

Staples, the nation’s largest office supply retailer, said Monday it is investigating a "potential issue" involving credit card data at its stores.

Staples spokesman Mark Cautela said in an email that the retailer has contacted law enforcement to help with its investigation.

"We take the protection of customer information very seriously and are working to resolve the situation," Cautela said in an email. “If Staples discovers an issue, it is important to note that customers are not responsible for any fraudulent activity on their credit cards that is reported on a timely basis." (more) (now-hack-the button)

Business Phone VoIP Hack - Phreaking Expensive

Bob Foreman’s architecture firm ran up a $166,000 phone bill in a single weekend last March. But neither Mr. Foreman nor anyone else at his seven-person company was in the office at the time... (hackers) routed $166,000 worth of calls from the firm to premium-rate telephone numbers in Gambia, Somalia and the Maldives...

The scheme works this way, telecommunications fraud experts say: Hackers sign up to lease premium-rate phone numbers, often used for sexual-chat or psychic lines, from one of dozens of web-based services that charge dialers over $1 a minute and give the lessee a cut...

Hackers then break into a business’s phone system and make calls through it to their premium number, typically over a weekend, when nobody is there to notice. With high-speed computers, they can make hundreds of calls simultaneously, forwarding as many as 220 minutes’ worth of phone calls a minute to the pay line...

...telecom experts advise people to turn off call forwarding and set up strong passwords for their voice mail systems and for placing international calls. (more)

A Royal Sting Spybusting Trick You Can Use

Kate Middleton reportedly thinks that someone is keeping a close eye on the day-to-day happenings of the palace. 

The reports have suggested that there is an over enthusiastic photographer or someone who is getting to know all the royal secrets.

"Middleton's paranoid that someone inside the palace is leaking her secrets. It's her worst nightmare," a source told Life &Style magazine...

The report added that the royal couple is taking required step to have a very private life. "They're trying desperately to find out who's spying on them by giving out false information to different people. If any of that information comes out, they'll know who's responsible." (more)

Business Espionage via Crowd Sourcing

Crowd sourcing any part of your secret project can blow your cover and evaporate your competitive advantages. Take your marketing materials for example. Just requesting help on a crowd source web site can alert the competition to your plans.

via frankie.bz...
Two weeks ago I discovered through a crowd sourcing portal for graphic design that a competitor of my client is preparing to launch a whole new product line. They where pitching for a “name” and “logo design” for a range of products.

I informed my client about the pitch and ask them if they knew something about the new product line. They didn’t and neither did the market – a scoop so to say. The information in the pitch was valuable to my client since it contained a very good description about the features of the new product line and when it will be launched. Therefore the client informed its sales force and they are now prepared to answer questions of their clients.

What can we learn from this experience?

• Do not crowd source design of “secret” products – especially if the pitch can be seen without any registration
• Do not describe your product in the project brief – send the description to an interested designer after he has signed a non disclosure agreement
• Do not link directly to your competitors site – I’ve found out about the pitch because I’ve seen hundreds of visitors coming from a non-industry related site
• Do prohibit your employees to blog, twitter, Facebook about a new product
• Use a project code name that does not relate to your industry or product
• Do not use Cloud-Services for your product development - unless you are sure that none of the information can be made available to the public

How can you use crowd sourcing and the internet for spying on your competitors?

• Visit crowd sourcing portals on a regular basis and search for projects related to your industry and competitors
• Use Google Alerts not only to monitor the web activity of your firm and brands, but also of your competitors
• Use crowd sourcing traditionally by letting the crowd search through social networks, forums and the web for information about your competitors
• Sign up and monitor the support forums of your main competitors (if they have one). If they don’t have one try to open a user-to-user support forum for your competitors products – and see what happens.

1958 - The Hollow Coin Spy Case

CIA Archives: The Hollow Coin - Espionage Case of Rudolf Abel (1958) 

Vilyam (Willie) Genrikhovich (August) Fisher (Вильям Генрихович Фишер) (July 11, 1903 — November 16, 1971) was a noted Soviet intelligence officer. He is generally better known by the alias Rudolf Abel, which he adopted on his arrest. His last name is sometimes given as Fischer; his patronymic is sometimes less exactly transliterated as Genrikovich. 

The Hollow Nickel Case (also known as The Hollow Coin), refers to the method that the Soviet Union spy Vilyam Genrikhovich Fisher (aka Rudolph Ivanovich Abel) used to exchange information between himself and his contacts, including Mikhail Nikolaevich Svirin and Reino Häyhänen. 

On June 22, 1953, a newspaper boy (fourteen-year-old newsie Jimmy Bozart), collecting for the Brooklyn Eagle, at an apartment building at 3403 Foster Avenue in Brooklyn, New York, was paid with a nickel (U.S. five cent piece) that felt too light to him. When he dropped it on the ground, it popped open and contained microfilm inside. The microfilm contained a series of numbers. 

He told the daughter of a New York City Police Department officer, that officer told a detective who in two days told an FBI agent about the strange nickel. After the FBI obtained the nickel and the microfilm, they tried to find out where the nickel had come from and what the numbers meant...

Chinese Phone Turns Smart Spy

China-based leading smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi, which recently marked a successful entry into the Indian market, is allegedly a security threat. It has been accused by the Indian Air Force (IAF) of sending user data to remote servers located in China -- a charge that amounts to spying...

Xiaomi MI Hongmi 1280x720 MIUI V5

Field Reports

• F-secure, a leading security solution company, recently carried out a test of Xiaomi Redmi 1s, the company’s budget smartphone, and found that the phone was forwarding carrier name, phone number, IMEI (the device identifier) and numbers from address book and text messages back to Beijing.

• A Hong Kong-based mobile phone user claims to have tested the Redmi Note smartphone and found it was automatically connected to an IP address hosted in China. The data transmitted included photo in media storage and text messages also.

According to the PhoneArena report, looking up the website of the company owning the IP address in the range 42.62.48.0-42.62.48.255 reveals that the website owner is www.cnnic.cn. CNNIC is the administrative agency responsible for Internet affairs under the Ministry of Information Industry of People’s Republic of China. It is based in the Zhongguancun hi-tech district of Beijing.

Therefore, the IAF in its alert to all of its Commands has stated that air warriors and their family members are advised to refrain from using these devices. (more)

Privacy Rights Fact Sheets

Privacy Fact Sheets

via The Privacy Rights Clearinghouse

1.	Privacy Survival Guide: Take Control of Your Personal Information
2.	Wireless Communications: Voice and Data Privacy
2a.	Hang Up on Harassment: Dealing with Cellular Phone Abuse
2b.	Privacy in the Age of the Smartphone
3.	How to Put an End to Unwanted or Harassing Phone Calls
4.	Junk Mail: How Did They All Get My Address?
4a.	"Shine the Light" on Marketers: Find Out How They Know Your Name
4b.	Junk Mail FAQ
5.	Telemarketing: How to Have a Quiet Evening at Home
5a.	Junk Faxes: No Relief in Sight
5b.	Frequently Asked Questions about Telemarketing
6.	Credit Reporting Basics: How Private Is My Credit Report?
6a.	Facts on FACTA, the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act
6b.	"Other" Consumer Reports: What You Should Know about "Specialty" Reports
6c.	Your Credit Score: How It All Adds Up
7.	Workplace Privacy and Employee Monitoring
8.	Introduction to Health and Medical Information Privacy
8a.	Health Privacy: HIPAA Basics
8b.	The HIPAA Privacy Rule: How May Covered Entities Use and Disclose Health Information
8c.	The HIPAA Privacy Rule: Patients' Rights
8d.	Protecting Health Information: the HIPAA Security and Breach Notification Rules
8e.	Health Privacy outside the Healthcare Environment: Health Records on the Job, Available to the Government, and in Credit Reports
9.	Wiretapping and Eavesdropping on Telephone Calls
10.	My Social Security Number - How Secure Is It?
10a.	Social Security Numbers FAQ
11.	From Cradle to Grave: Government Records and Your Privacy
12.	Checklist of Responsible Information-Handling Practices
12a.	Personal Data Retention and Destruction Plan
14.	Are You Being Stalked?
14a.	Security Recommendations For Stalking Victims
15.	What Personal Information Should You Give to Merchants?
16.	Employment Background Checks: A Jobseeker's Guide
16a.	Employment Background Checks in California: A Focus on Accuracy
16b.	Small Business Owner Background Check Guide
16c.	FAQ on Employment Background Checks
16d.	Volunteer Background Checks: Giving Back Without Giving Up on Privacy
17.	Coping with Identity Theft: Reducing the Risk of Fraud
17a.	Identity Theft: What to Do if It Happens to You
17b.	How to Deal with a Security Breach
17d.	Frequently Asked Questions about Identity Theft
17g.	Criminal Identity Theft: What to Do if It Happens to You
18.	Online Privacy: Using the Internet Safely
18a.	Online Privacy FAQ
19.	Caller ID and My Privacy
20.	Anti-Spam Resources
21.	Children’s Online Privacy: A Resource Guide for Parents
21a.	Children's Safety on the Internet
22.	Electricity and Your Privacy: Deregulation in California
23.	Online Shopping Tips: E-Commerce and You
24.	Protecting Financial Privacy: The Burden Is on You
24a.	Financial Privacy: How to Read Your "Opt-Out" Notices
24d.	Financial Privacy FAQ
24e.	Is Your Financial Information Safe?
25.	Privacy Tips for Online Job Seekers
25a.	Avoiding Online Job Scams
26.	CLUE and You: How Insurers Size You Up
27.	Debt Collection Practices: When Hardball Tactics Go Too Far
27a.	Frequently Asked Questions about Debt Collection
28.	Online Privacy for Nonprofits
29.	Privacy in Education: Guide for Parents and Adult-Age Students
30.	Check 21: Paperless Banking
31.	Customer Identification Programs for Financial Transactions
32.	Paper or Plastic: What Have You Got to Lose?
33.	Identity Theft Monitoring Services
34.	Protecting Your Telephone Records: Does Your Carrier’s Privacy Policy Ring True?
35.	Social Networking Privacy: How to be Safe, Secure and Social
36.	Securing Your Computer to Maintain Your Privacy
37.	The Perils and Pitfalls of Online Dating: How to Protect Yourself
38.	A Renter’s Guide to Privacy: What to Know Before You Sign the Lease, While You Rent, and When You Move Out
39.	Mobile Health and Fitness Apps: What Are the Privacy Risks?
40.	Bring Your Own Device . . . at Your Own Risk
41.	Data Brokers and Your Privacy

California Medical Privacy Series

C1.	Medical Privacy Basics for Californians
C2.	How Is Your Medical Information Used and Disclosed -- With and Without Consent?
C3.	Your Medical Information and Your Rights
C4.	Your Prescriptions and Your Privacy
C5.	Employment and Your Medical Privacy
C6.	Health Information Exchange: Is Your Privacy Protected?
C7.	Personal Health Records and Privacy
C8.	Medical Information Covered by Laws Other than HIPAA
C9.	Beyond the Doctor's Office: privacy laws may apply in situations you haven't considered.
C10.	The "Gray Areas": Is Your Health Privacy Protected?

Even Good Spys Have a Bad Day Once in a While

The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (Asio) inadvertently spied on its own employees, 

in one of a series of surveillance breaches in the past 12 months compiled by Australia’s intelligence watchdog.

The Inspector General of Intelligence and Security (Igis) annual report was tabled in parliament on Thursday, and identified a series of breaches of Asio’s spying powers at a time when the federal government is granting the agency unprecedented new powers. (more)

Binder Flaw Threatens to Blow Apart Android Security

Security researchers have warned of a serious security flaw in Android which could potentially leave every device open to attack.

The vulnerability is in the operating system’s ubiquitous inter-process communication (IPC) tool known as Binder, according to a Black Hat Europe presentation on Thursday by Check Point researchers Nitay Artenstein and Idan Revivo...

“Subverting this component allows an attacker to see and control almost all important data being transferred within the system,” the two say in their research paper. (more)

Hackers Target Hong Kong Protesters via iPhones

When the Hong Kong protests were at their height, activists using WhatsApp received messages advertising a program that promised to help them coordinate protests.  

When the demonstrators downloaded the program through a link in the message, it turned out to be malicious software—most likely created by the Chinese government—that hacked their smartphones.

Lacoon Mobile Security, based in San Francisco, began to analyze the phony app after spotting unusual communication on the networks of its corporate clients, some of whose employees had downloaded it. In tracing the spyware’s path to the websites where it sent data, Lacoon’s researchers found a much rarer species of malware: a version that can steal information from iPhones. (more) (video)

FBI to Congress - More Power Please

The FBI is asking Congress to give it new powers to force technology companies to turn over private information on their customers. 

FBI Director James Comey warned Thursday that new technologies are making it easy for criminals to hide incriminating information from police...

For several years, the FBI has been warning about the problem of new technologies allowing criminals to "go dark." But Comey explained that his new push was prompted by the decisions by Apple and Google to provide default encryption on their phones that will make it impossible to unlock them for police, even when faced with a court order. (more)

Tunnel Vision Focus on IT Security - The Biggest Mistake...

...companies make when securing sensitive data.

FACTS
• All pre-computer era information theft tactics still work, and are still used.
• Most “computerized” information is available long before it is put into a computer.
• Data theft is the low hanging fruit of the business espionage world. The real pros use ladders.

Murray's Holistic Approach to Information Security
1. Protect information while it is being generated (discussions, audio and video communications, strategy development). Conduct Technical Surveillance Countermeasures (TSCM) inspections of offices and conference rooms on a scheduled basis. Example: Ford Motors found voice recorders hidden in seven of their conference rooms this summer.

2. Protect information while it is in transit (phone, teleconference, Board meetings, off-site conferences). Wiretapping and Wi-Fi are still very effective spy tools. Check for wiretaps on a scheduled basis, and/or encrypt the transmissions. Conduct pre-meeting TSCM inspections. Tip: Never let presenters use old technology FM wireless microphones. The signal travels further than you think, and is easily intercepted.

3. Protect how information is stored. Unlocked offices, desk and file cabinets are a treasure trove of the freshest information. Print centers store a copy of all print jobs. Limit written distribution of sensitive information. Crosscut shred sensitive waste paper. All these vulnerabilities and more should be covered during the security survey portion of your TSCM inspection.

4. Educate the people to whom sensitive information is entrusted. Security briefings don’t have to be long and tedious. Establish basic rules and procedures. Explain the importance of information security in terms they can understand, e.g. “Information is business blood. If it stays healthy and in the system, your job, and chances for advancement, stay healthy.”

Effective information security requires a holistic protection plan. IT security is an important part of this plan, but it is only one door to your house of information.
 
There is more you need to know. Contact a TSCM specialist for further assistance. (counterespionage.com)

Cell Phone Eavesdropping Just Became Really Difficult

Scientists have invented a new method to encrypt telephone conversations that makes it very difficult to 'eavesdrop'. 

Professor Lars Ramkilde Knudsen from Technical University of Denmark (DTU) has invented a new method called dynamic encryption to ensure that all telephone calls are encrypted and eavesdroppers are unable to decrypt information in order to obtain secrets...

The new method expands the AES algorithm with several layers which are never the same... The new system can prove hugely effective in combating industrial espionage, said Knudsen.

Industrial espionage occurs when different players discover and steal trade secrets such as business plans from companies, technical know-how and research results, budgets and secret plans using phone tapping. (more)

Chinese Renovation Plan Creates Waldorf-Hysteria

Concerned about potential security risks, the U.S. government is taking a close look at last week's sale of New York's iconic Waldorf Astoria hotel to a Chinese insurance company.

U.S. officials said Monday they are reviewing the Oct. 6 purchase of the Waldorf by the Beijing-based Anbang Insurance Group, which bought the hotel from Hilton Worldwide for $1.95 billion. Terms of the sale allow Hilton to run the hotel for the next 100 years and call for "a major renovation" that officials say has raised eyebrows in Washington, where fears of Chinese eavesdropping and cyber espionage run high. (more)

Rogue Bank Security Department Buys Wiretaps

The accusations read like a pulp thriller: Citigroup employees in Mexico are suspected of pocketing millions of dollars in kickbacks from vendors. And bodyguards for bank executives bought audio recordings of personal phone calls and created shell companies to disguise their fraud...

The security unit’s primary purpose was to protect the Banamex leadership, but at some point, the unit started operating beyond its approved duties, according to the person briefed on the matter who was not authorized to speak publicly because of the criminal investigation. The security unit was also providing protection and security consulting services for people outside the bank, sometimes as a courtesy and at other times for money, the internal investigation found. The conduct spanned more than a decade, the investigation found, extending into last year... 

Citigroup’s outside lawyers have turned over information to law enforcement officials in Mexico and the United States, but there are many things the bank doesn’t know about the rogue security unit. For example, the security team had purchased audio surveillance files from “third parties” that included cellphone and landline conversations of dozens of people — some of a highly personal nature, the person said. The Banamex unit then transcribed many of these files. It was unclear why the security team was amassing records of the personal conversations. The bank’s investigators are still working to determine why the security unit gathered the conversations, involving dozens of people, many of whom had nothing to do with the bank. (more)