Business Espionage Alert - Bribing for Passwords

Ireland has a new problem to throw at Apple: hackers are trying to buy company logins from employees. In some cases, employees are being offered upwards of €20,000 (about US$22,245) in efforts to coax out user names and passwords.

An Apple employee told Business Insider, "You'd be surprised how many people get on to us, just random Apple employees. You get emails offering you thousands [of euros] to get a password to get access to Apple."

Hackers are reportedly also targeting Apple employees for company information.

Exactly what hackers expect to accomplish once they have logins isn't clear. They may be trying to conduct industrial espionage (well, duh), dig up personal information, disrupt company plans, or something else entirely. more

You can bet this isn't just happening at Apple. Warn your employees you are on to this, watching for it, and will prosecute disloyal employees. ~Kevin

Bugging & Wiretapping History - "The Eavesdroppers"

In July 1956, the Pennsylvania Bar Association Endowment (PBAE) commissioned a comprehensive study of "wiretapping practices, laws, devices, and techniques" in the United States... The man appointed to direct the study was Samuel Dash... The result of Dash's efforts was The Eavesdroppers, a 483-page report co-authored with Knowlton and Schwartz. Rutgers University Press published it as a standalone volume in 1959. The book uncovered a wide range of privacy infringements on the part of state authorities and private citizens, a much bigger story than the PBAE had anticipated...

The eavesdropping threat loomed large during the 1950s and 1960s: in the work of state and local law enforcement agencies, who wiretapped extensively in criminal investigations; in the exploits of private investigators and eavesdropping specialists, who capitalized on technological innovations to expand their industry's reach; and, perhaps most importantly, in the contradictions of state and federal lawmakers, who sent conflicting messages about the legitimacy of eavesdropping practices that had dogged the nation's communications infrastructure for more than a century...

Wiretapping is as old as wired communication. Civil War generals traveled with professional telegraph tappers in the 1860s, law enforcement agencies began planting telephone taps in the 1890s, and corporate communications giants tacitly sanctioned state and federal eavesdropping programs of various sorts for most of the twentieth century. Somewhat surprisingly, this wasn't a drama that played out in the shadows of American life. Police eavesdropping garnered front-page headlines during the 1920s, when the telephone tap emerged as an effective tool in the enforcement of Prohibition laws...

Eavesdropping technologies of various sorts have been around for centuries. Prior to the invention of recorded sound, the vast majority of listening devices were extensions of the built environment. Perhaps nodding to the origins of the practice (listening under the eaves of someone else's home, where rain drops from the roof to the ground), early modern architects designed buildings with structural features that amplified private speech. The Jesuit polymath Athanasius Kircher (1601-1680) devised cone-shaped ventilation ducts for palaces and courts that allowed eavesdroppers to listen to other people's conversations. Catherine de' Medici (1519-1589) is said to have installed similar structures in the Louvre to keep tabs on individuals who might have plotted against her. Architectural listening systems weren't always a product of intentional design. Domes in St. Paul's Cathedral in London and the U.S. Capitol building still serve as inadvertent "whispering galleries," enabling prying ears to hear conversations held on the other side of the room. Archaeologists have discovered acoustical arrangements like these dating back to 3000 B.C.E. Many were used for eavesdropping...

Click to enlarge.

The earliest electronic eavesdropping technologies functioned much like architectural listening systems. When installed in fixed locations—under floorboards and rugs, on walls and windows, inside desks and bookcases—early-twentieth-century devices like the Detectifone, a technological cousin to the more common Dictaphone, proved surprisingly effective...

The devices that we now think of as "bugs" emerged much later. During the late 1940s, electronic innovations made it possible for eavesdroppers to miniaturize listening technologies like the Detectifone. This made them easier to hide. It also freed them from the strictures of the built environment, dramatically expanding their reach. Reports of an American bugging epidemic began circulating in the early 1950s—first, as glimpses of the man-made miracle of electronics miniaturization began to appear in national newspapers, popular magazines, and Hollywood films, and later as congressional subcommittees revealed scandalous tools of the eavesdropping trade on the floor of the United States Senate. more

More Eavesdropping Resistant than a Brick S-House

By replacing the limestone and sand
typically used in concrete with a mineral called magnetite, Tuan has shown that the mixture can also shield against electromagnetic waves.

The electromagnetic spectrum includes the radio-frequency waves transmitted and received by cellphones, which Tuan said could make the concrete mixture useful to those concerned about becoming targets of industrial espionage.

Using the magnetite-embedded concrete, researchers have built a small structure in their laboratory that demonstrates the material's shielding capabilities. more

Employee Bugs Boss, or Bad Hair Day Beef

A labor dispute in a city hair salon 

became criminal when an employee made an audio recording of her boss, without the boss' knowledge, said Acting Deputy Police Chief Frank Warchol.

The employee, Nichole Brock, 35, of 89 Linden St. Unit B, Exeter, was arrested Monday on a misdemeanor count of wiretapping, police reported. Warchol said the law prohibits recording anyone without consent from all parties being recorded and that Brock's recording was made secretly. He said the underlying dispute was not criminal, but the recording was. more

Stealing White - How a corporate spy swiped plans for DuPont’s billion-dollar color formula

“At first, you’re like: Why are they stealing the color white?

I had to Google it to figure out what titanium dioxide even was,” says Dean Chappell, acting section chief of counterespionage for the FBI. “Then you realize there is a strategy to it.”

You can’t even call it spying, adds John Carlin, the assistant attorney general in charge of the U.S. Department of Justice’s national security division. “This is theft. And this—stealing the color white—is a very good example of the problem. It’s not a national security secret. It’s about stealing something you can make a buck off of. It’s part of a strategy to profit off what American ingenuity creates.”

Most trade-secret theft goes unreported. Companies worry that disclosing such incidents will hurt their stock prices, harm relationships with customers, or prompt federal agents to put them under a microscope. Theft of trade secrets also rarely results in criminal charges because the cases are time-consuming and complicated, and it’s often difficult to win a conviction for conspiracy to commit espionage. more

Extra Credit...

Why China Needs to Play By the Rules

This Week in Business Espionage

• XPO Logistics Inc. charges that rival YRC Worldwide Inc. went to illegal extremes as XPO bought Con-way Inc. last year, the WSJ’s Loretta Chao writes, raiding the less-than-truckload carrier for executives and trade secrets on its operations and its customers. YRC won’t comment on the charges... XPO’s allegation of what amounts to corporate espionage comes at a critical time for the company. more

• One of the UK’s largest companies, British American Tobacco (BAT) is facing demands that it be investigated by the US Department of Justice, following allegations that it engaged in widespread bribery of politicians and policymakers in Africa... There are also claims that the company engaged in corporate espionage and the sabotage of competitors in Kenya. more

• Barcelona (soccer team) say they are “oblivious” to allegations of industrial espionage brought against them and former President Sandro Rosell. The Spanish Press reported on Friday that communications group Mediapro had taken Barca and Rosell to court, with its owner Jaume Roures accusing the ex-patron of e-mail theft, divulging business secrets and invading his privacy. more

• If American businesses want to curb the theft of their trade secrets and intellectual property by other countries, they are going to have to do it themselves. The good news for the American private sector is that machine learning (ML) and behavioral analytics, are offering some promise of detecting hackers before they start exfiltrating trade secrets and intellectual property (IP)... The not so good news is that those businesses are not going to be getting much help from the government. more

...and from "The World is a Strange Place" files...
• A U.S. law firm specializing in cross-border matters has opened its first office in China recently, aiming to assist local companies with legal issues against the background of a spate of spying charges against Chinese nationals. The law firm, Alston & Bird, opened its Beijing office on January 27, marking the first overseas branch of the law firm. The firm has served as counsel to a number of Chinese clients, including Tianjin University's Professor Zhang Hao, who was charged in the U.S. with economic espionage and theft of trade secrets. more

Another Bad Week for Spies

• Saudi Arabia places 27 on trial for spying for Iran more

• Hamas armed wing executes member 'for spying for Israel' more

• North Korea detains American citizen for allegedly spying more

• Iran holding several dual citizens on charges of spying more

• Four arrested 'spies' of postal dept suspended more

• Spy row officer lodges complaint against her superior more

and, to make spy image matters worse...
• Gabriel Kahane Wears Sunglasses Inside to Look Like a Spy and Sings About It on 'The Fiction Issue' more

Don't Trust Hotel Safes - Reason 6 - A Sock & Magnet Can Open Many of Them

15,000+ People Get Paid by Their Eavesdropper

People will turn their smartphones into spying devices for just $5/month

Symphony Advanced Media, founded in 2010, has recruited over 15,000 people to be part of its “panel of media insiders.”

They downloaded an app from Symphony that collects a ton of information from their smartphones, and turns on their microphones every minute for 5-6 seconds to see what they’re watching on their TV or computer. Here’s how Symphony describes on its website what it knows about each individual in its panel:

Click to enlarge.

The data sucked up from panelists’ phones includes where they are; their Internet traffic; their search keywords; which mobile apps they use and for how long; how many calls, emails and texts they send; and, of course, what they’re watching on network or digital TV. In exchange for having everything they do on their phone spied on, panelists are paid $5/month—not in cash, but in the form of points on Perks.com. more

Amateur Eavesdroppers in the News This Week

MA - Brianne St. Peter McMahon, 36, was indicted Wednesday by a Plymouth County Grand Jury on charges including wiretapping and misleading a police investigation, according to the office of Plymouth District Attorney Timothy J. Cruz.

In October 2015, McMahon allegedly slipped her cellphone into the pocket of a witness, who was set to appear before a grand jury at Brockton Superior Court, to record the proceedings and interviews related to the murder of 45-year-old Robert McKennacq, according to Cruz’s office.

Later that afternoon, State Police seized the phone from the witness, a friend of McMahon’s who was unaware the device had been placed in her pocket, according to the indictment. more

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MA - Three employees at Wyman-Gordon company in Grafton, Massachusetts, are facing felony wiretapping charges for setting up a hidden camera with audio to record their coworker inside their workplace, reports CBS Boston. more

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S. Africa - An electronics expert testified in court on Monday that he planted a “bugging” device in the Pietermaritzburg advocates’ chambers and helped put a GPS tracker on an advocate’s car at the request of KZN advocate Penny Hunt.

Houston Wayne Impey said he had, at Hunt’s request, also removed the CCTV hard drive installed at the advocates’ chambers to copy the footage captured on the system.

Hunt had told him to plant the bugging device in the ceiling of the advocates’ chambers so she could listen to, and record, conversations in her secretary’s office, because she suspected her of leaking confidential information, he said. more

FutureWatch - Another Step Closer to the Future of Eavesdropping

...a new experiment at the University of Washington may be bringing ESP closer to the realm of reality.

According to University of Washington computational neuroscientist Rajesh Rao and UW Medicine neurosurgeon Jeff Ojemann, the combination of a brain implant and a complex algorithm has given researchers the ability to predict human thoughts with unprecedented speed and accuracy. In fact, the duo says, they’re able to track what we’re thinking as we’re thinking it, bringing us closer to mind reading than ever before...

 “We were trying to understand, first, how the human brain perceives objects in the temporal lobe, and second, how one could use a computer to extract and predict what someone is seeing in real time,” explained Rao to the UW NewsBeat. “Clinically, you could think of our result as a proof of concept toward building a communication mechanism for patients who are paralyzed or have had a stroke and are completely locked-in,” he said. more

FutureWatch - Keep Your Eye on IoT - The Encryption Debate is a Distraction

...products, ranging from “toasters to bedsheets, light bulbs, cameras, toothbrushes, door locks, cars, watches and other wearables,” will give the government increasing opportunities to track suspects and in many cases reconstruct communications and meetings. more

...from "Don’t Panic: Making Progress on the ‘Going Dark’ Debate"
The audio and video sensors on IoT devices will open up numerous avenues for government actors to demand access to real-time and recorded communications.

A ten-year-old case involving an in-automobile concierge system provides an early indication of how this might play out. The system enables the company to remotely monitor and respond to a car’s occupants through a variety of sensors and a cellular connection. At the touch of a button, a driver can speak to a representative who can provide directions or diagnose problems with the car. During the course of an investigation, the FBI sought to use the microphone in a car equipped with such a system to capture conversations taking place in the car’s cabin between two alleged senior members of organized crime.

In 2001, a federal court in Nevada issued ex parte orders that required the company to assist the FBI with the intercept. The company appealed, and though the Ninth Circuit disallowed the interception on other grounds, it left open the possibility of using in-car communication devices for surveillance provided the systems’ safety features are not disabled in the process.

Such assistance might today be demanded from any company capable of recording conversations or other activity at a distance, whether through one’s own smartphone, an Amazon Echo, a baby monitor, an Internet-enabled security camera, or a futuristic “Elf on a Shelf” laden with networked audio and image sensors. more

Attention Attorneys - Time to Sweep for Electronic Surveillance Devices

With attention growing on the use of shell companies in high-end real estate, an activist organization released a report Sunday night that said several New York real estate lawyers had been caught on camera providing advice on how to move suspect money into the United States. 

The report is the result of an undercover investigation carried out in 2014 by Global Witness, a nonprofit activist organization that has been pushing for stricter money-laundering rules.

The lawyers featured in the report include a recent president of the American Bar Association. more video sweep service

Business Espionage: Corn Spy Pops

Security for Dupont Pioneer’s cornfields in Iowa suspected something when they detected men crawling around in the cornfields, and alerted the FBI two years ago. 

Now, one man — Chinese citizen Mo Hailong — has admitted to attempted kernel theft.
Mo was a part of a conspiracy to smuggle U.S. corn from producers Dupont Pioneer and Monsanto in Iowa and ship it to China, where scientists would attempt to replicate the corn’s genetic properties. Prosecutors accused Mo of working with others in the group Kings Nower Seed, a subsidiary of the Beijing Dabeinong Technology Group, the Associated Press reports. more

Spies Accused of Winging It, or A Very Sordid Sortie

Israel Nature and Parks Authority officials are pleading for the release of a vulture after residents of a southern Lebanese town captured the bird, claiming it was being used for spying. 

Lebanese media reported that the bird – allegedly carrying Israeli spy equipment -- was caught Tuesday to prevent it from attacking citizens in the town of Bint Jbail, according to the Jerusalem Post...

Israeli officials said the bird was released in the Gamla Nature Reserve about a month ago after arriving from Spain in 2015. The bird, outfitted with a transmitter, was brought to Israel in hopes to increase its local population, the officials added. more

P.S. They came to their senses and released the vulture.