Sunday, January 10, 2016

Buy Banksy Spy Art - Get a free House

Consider yourself a bargain hunter with a penchant for modern art? Well why not buy a Banksy mural for just £210,000 ($304,900 UDS) and to sweeten the deal the owner will throw in a three-bedroom house.

A property in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, featuring the artist's Spy Booth piece is on the market after its stressed owner said he was sick of the circus caused by the mural.

Spy Booth shows three 1950s-style agents, wearing brown trench coats and trilby hats, using devices to tap into conversations at a telephone box. more - with video
click to enlarge


Monday, January 4, 2016

"Official? Nah, I'm just hanging out here."

UK government wants to send tech companies officials to jail 

for disclosing snooping details on users.

Under a new sweeping law, many tech companies like Twitter, Yahoo and Google may face prison if they tip off their customers about spying operations by police and the security services.

These tech giants have a policy of notifying users when it’s suspected that a state-level actor is attempting to hack into their account. Twitter, Facebook and Google had previously assured their users that they would also warn them of any potential government spying. more

Surveillance Cameras Get Twittered

There is an air of mystery when you first notice @FFD8FFDB...

The Twitter bot tweets a grainy, context-free picture escorted by a line of peculiarly formatted gibberish every few minutes.

Only after you begin digging into the actual working of the bot that it becomes clear that the project is developed on a profoundly disquieting foundation that throws light on one of the major privacy escapes in the modern telecommunication set-up.

Basically, the software behind @FFD8FFDB browses the Internet for webcams whose operators have left them unsafe, taking screenshots from the feeds, and then tweets them. more

Time to check your surveillance cameras for password protection. ~Kevin

Et tu Earhart?

A new book about Amelia Earhart contains the controversial claim that she wasn’t really killed when her plane crashed in the middle of the Pacific in 1937 but instead was taken prisoner by the Japanese as a spy...

...she and navigator Fred Noonan vanished without a trace during an attempt to circumnavigate the globe.

What happened to the duo and their twin-engine aircraft during the round-the-world bid has remained one of aviation’s enduring mysteries.


Now ‘Amelia Earhart: Beyond the Grave,’ by WC Jameson, which is published tomorrow, January 5, makes the controversial claim that Earhart was actually sent to the South Pacific on a surveillance operation that had been authorized by United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Mr Jameson claims that her plane was fitted with cameras with which to film Japanese military outposts and that she was actually shot down and taken prisoner.

He also claims that she was released in 1945 and returned to the United States under an assumed identity.

This flies in the face of the long-standing official theory that the pair ran out of fuel and crash landed in the middle of the Pacific Ocean near Howland Island. more

A Tale of Two Spy Cams

Despite the fast-moving pace of technology, there is one thing that's fairly uncommon, and that is a USB-powered speaker.


It's something that just simply isn't seen very often, and for fairly obvious reasons. Now, why am I pointing this out? Well, if you happen to encounter what looks like a normal computer speaker and there's a USB cord coming out the back of it, you should probably be a little suspicious about the speaker's true intentions.


After removing the back... That white thing is not a speaker -- it's actually a web cam. Someone created this unique spy speaker with bad intentions. more

Sometimes, spycams pose as legitimate web cams. 

I came across this recently...

Clue. Legitimate web cams don't need infrared LEDs positioned around the lens.  ~Kevin

Sunday, December 20, 2015

Irony Alert: Video Voyeur Sentenced - He Was Caught Spying by Spying

Former Border Patrol agent Armando Gonzalez was sentenced to 21 months in federal prison for planting a hidden camera in the women’s restroom at a Chula Vista Border Patrol facility. 

The camera, which Gonzalez used to violate the privacy of female employees who used the restroom, was discovered when he made reference to it in an email sent from his personal account to a friend and fellow voyeur-cam enthusiast...

Back Stories...
  • Department of Homeland Security’s surveillance of private emails credited with discovery of Border Patrol agent’s hidden camera voyeurism...
  • Further, drone footage taken through Mr. Gonzalez’s bedroom window clearly shows him viewing the camera’s digital feed on this personal computer. more

The Spy Pen in the Pen, or... Why You Need a Recording in the Workplace Policy

In March, state computer technician Rob Jones was on a routine job assignment at Maury Correctional Institution east of Goldsboro, working on a computer in an office used by private maintenance contractors.

Jones wanted to write a note but did not have a pen, so he grabbed one from the desk and clicked it.

Instead of a protruding pen point, Jones saw a blue light. He clicked again and the light changed to amber.

Jones didn’t know what the pen was, but he apparently knew it didn’t belong inside a maximum security prison. Jones took the pen to his office, unscrewed the top and found a USB plug. When he plugged it into a computer he saw the pen was actually a video camera.

Spy cameras, like cellphones and weapons, are contraband in prison. Jones gave it to his supervisors, whose investigation showed that a maintenance worker employed by The Keith Corp. brought the spy pen into the prison.

The investigation found that Andrew Foster, the top Keith employee at Maury, used the camera several months before to secretly record a meeting with the prison superintendent, whom Foster believed had mistreated him. Foster sent the recording to his bosses in Charlotte, who watched it but did not report the contraband to prison officials. more

P.S. I provide a "Recording in the Workplace" policy template (no charge) to all my clients.

Smartphone App: Record, Store & More

There are plenty of apps for recording your phone calls, but Yallo one has some extra tricks... like adding a subject line to your phone call. 
  • "Not urgent if you're busy."
  • "Emergency. Pick up."
  • "Quick question, promise."
  • "This is the kidnapper."
The full feature set... 

iPhone Call Recording App features:
  1. Outgoing Call Recording
  2. Free Incoming Call Recording - Unlimited!
  3. Saved on a Secure Cloud - Free Up Space
  4. Truly Unlimited Call Duration
  5. Keep Your Caller ID
  6. Mark Favorite Calls
  7. Custom Call Title 

Android App features:
  1. Go Yallo: No cell reception? No problem! With Go Yallo you are still available for calls to your regular number via WiFi and Yallo. 
  2. For the Record: Record and playback your calls, send them to your email, HD call quality. Save calls and listen later. Forward a recorded call to somebody else. Search based on keywords and phrases used in the call. 
  3. Call Caption: Want to let someone know why you’re calling so they can decide to pick up or not? Call Caption is the answer. Write a quick message that gives someone the context in advance.
  4. Existing Phone Numbers Welcome: No need to get a new number or transfer your existing one. Yallo works with your current number.
  5. Flexible: Make any device your phone, regardless of where your SIM card is. Out of juice or lost your phone? No problem. Log into Yallo on someone else’s phone and voila! it is your phone. Outgoing calls have your caller ID and incoming calls to your regular number, now come to your newly adopted phone.

The Ultimate Smartphone Brain Sucking Spider

As Razyone describes its product, "InterApp is a game-changing tactical intelligence system, developed for intelligence and law enforcement agencies, enabling them to stealthily collect information from the cloud using smartphone application vulnerabilities."

InterApp can allow its operators to break into nearby smartphones that have their WiFi connection open, and then, employing a diverse arsenal of security vulnerabilities, gain root permission on devices and exfiltrate information to a tactical server.

InterApp can steal passwords and data from targeted smartphones.

According to Rayzone, InterApp can steal a user's email address password and content, passwords for social networking apps, Dropbox passwords and files, the user's phone contact list, and his photo gallery.

Additionally, the gadget can also acquire the phone's previous geographical locations and plot them on a map, IMEI details, MSISDN data, MAC address, device model, OS info, and personal information on the target, such as gender, age, address, education, and more...

Even better, InterApp's hacking operations leave no forensics traces on a target's smartphone, or so Rayzone claims. more

Thursday, December 17, 2015

A History of Privacy - From 1844 to the NSA

An extraordinary fuss about eavesdropping 
started in the spring of 1844, when Giuseppe Mazzini, an Italian exile in London, became convinced that the British government was opening his mail.

Mazzini, a revolutionary who’d been thrown in jail in Genoa, imprisoned in Savona, sentenced to death in absentia, and arrested in Paris, was plotting the unification of the kingdoms of Italy and the founding of an Italian republic.

He suspected that, in London, he’d been the victim of what he called “post-office espionage”... more

Wednesday, December 16, 2015

From Ear Trumpets to Listening Urns: 2,500 Years of Chinese Bugging

Wee Kek Koon says, in light of Hong Kong University Council leaks, that China has a long history of clandestine recording.

Given the number of audio recordings involving members of the University of Hong Kong council leaked recently, one fears Hong Kong will become a place where everybody either watches what they say or chooses not to say anything for fear of being tried and fried by public opinion. The obvious question – who’s been doing the recording? – on everyone’s minds notwithstanding, it can’t be that hard to screen for listening devices.

Illustration: Bay Leung

Clandestine listening devices in ancient China were simple cylindrical tubes pressed against the wall, which gave rise to the saying geqiang you’er (“the walls have ears”).

“Listening urns”, which were detailed in a military treatise some 2,500 years ago, were used on battlefields to provide advance warning of enemy approach. A wide-bodied urn would be buried with its small opening above ground, over which a thin piece of leather was stretched. By pressing one’s ear to the leather, one could detect the direction from which an enemy was approaching. For precision, huge urns were used, with someone sitting inside, at times. The visually impaired were preferred, for their supposedly acute sense of hearing. more

Bugging Incident - Episcopal Church COO Placed on Administrative Leave

via David W. Virtue DD
The Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church, Michael Curry, has suspended his right hand man, COO Bishop Stacey Sauls, and placed him on administrative leave along with two other senior church officers over what is being described as "misconduct in carrying out their duties as members of senior management of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society."

No one will give information about the exact nature of the incident...

A tape-recording device had been concealed and was running, Barlowe told a shocked room. Council members were exhorted to look under their tables to see if anything was taped. The hidden tape recorder was found on the floor near the lead table where top church leaders had been seated throughout Executive Council... No surveillance cameras that might have recorded someone hiding the recorder were found.

Who would possibly want to bug a church that is dying and has already passed all the hot button issues at various General Conventions? What is there left to bug, pray tell? Apparently a lot.

The incident resembles something out of an episode of Fawlty Towers, when Fawlty (John Cleese) bugged a guest's room to check how much toilet paper was being used. more

VPN Equip All Your Devices... especially if you use public Wi-Fi

To put it simply, a Virtual Private Network (VPN) is a service or program that allows a device to connect to a secure offsite server over a network using an encrypted, “tunnel-like” connection.

It allows the user’s IP address to be masked, providing a layer of all-important privacy and anonymity. Besides, the encryption of the connection is generally of such a high-grade that any data transmitted can be considered perfectly safe. Originally used for businesses, companies offering VPN services to consumers started to form, realizing the immense security benefits that users can reap from the service.

They are used by everyone from families at home who want to make sure no one can track their online habits to a journalist who doesn’t want people or governments to know where they are. Travelers love them in particular due to the safety they grant one on unknown networks. The underlying thread is protection, and running a quality VPN on your computer is a surefire way to make yourself safer and protect your personal information. more