Happy Holidays, or How Not to Get Scammed Online This Season

Protect yourself against online shopping scams by watching for these 10 telltale signs...

Many mom-and-pop retail stores maintain websites for selling their wares, and some entrepreneurs create online-only stores that ship products directly from warehouses. Unfortunately, scammers also use ecommerce as an opportunity to take shoppers' personal and financial information from afar. An odd-looking site or too-good-to-be-true deal might be the work of scammer rather than an ecommerce amateur. The following 10 signs can help shoppers distinguish between the two. more

Lawyers Should Not Bug Opposing Lawyer's Email

Alaska may have only about 2,500 active resident lawyers, but its bar ethics committee has become just the second authority in the country to weigh in on the practice of “bugging” the e-mail of opposing counsel.

The committee disapproved of this spy method in an opinion issued in late October, saying that it violated the Last Frontier’s version of Model Rule 8.4, which prohibits dishonesty and misrepresentation.

A “web bug” is a tracking device consisting of an object embedded in a web page or e-mail, that unobtrusively (usually invisibly) reveals whether and how a user has accessed the content. Other names for a web bug are web beacon, pixel tracker and page tag. more

Want to check who is secretly bugging you? Little Snitch for OSX does an excellent job and offers a free trial. Similar products exist for PC based computers. ~Kevin

This $5 Device Can Hack Your Locked Computer In One Minute

Next time you go out for lunch and leave your computer unattended at the office, be careful. A new tool makes it almost trivial for criminals to log onto websites as if they were you, and get access to your network router, allowing them to launch other types of attacks.

Hackers and security researchers have long found ways to hack into computers left alone. But the new $5 tool called PoisonTap, created by the well-known hacker and developer Samy Kamkar, can even break into password-protected computers, as long as there’s a browser open in the background. Kamkar explained how it works in a blog post published on Wednesday.


And all a hacker has to do is plug it in and wait. more

Tune into PI's Declassified! Thursday, 9 am Pacific, Noon Eastern

Is Your Cell Phone Bugging You?
Do you want to know how to protect your cell phone privacy or detect spyware on your smartphone? Are there warning signs that your phone is infected with spyware? Are there applications available to prevent your phone from being tapped or to catch the spy red-handed? Kevin D. Murray is an expert on mobile phone electronic surveillance and eavesdropping detection, known as technical surveillance countermeasures. He is also the author of Is My Cell Phone Bugged? Tune in to hear Kevin Murray discuss detecting mobile phone spyware, and tips to protect your most private conversations.
Link to show

Shazam, You're Bugged!

Shazam Keeps Your Mac’s Microphone Always On, Even When You Turn It Off

What’s that song? On your cellphone, the popular app Shazam is able to answer that question by listening for just a few seconds, as if it were magic. On Apple’s computers, Shazam never turns the microphone off, even if you tell it to.

When a user of Shazam’s Mac app turns the app “OFF,” the app actually keeps the microphone on in the background.

For the security researcher who discovered that the mic is always on, it's a bug that users should know about. For Shazam, it’s just a feature that makes the app work better. more

TSCM School: How Small Can Electronic Surveillance Bugs Be?

...or, why we listen to the wires.

Electronic surveillance devices (audio, video, data) are often referred to by their generic term — bugs.

Amplified Mic (enlarged)

Bugs may be highly specialized, as in a video only spy camera, or may incorporate audio, video and data snooping. An example of this is a device which is secreted in a vehicle, which collects GPS data, audio and video.

Most people, however, think of bugs as audio-only radio transmitters.

Often the simplest bugs are the most effective. These are just microphones attached to a length of wire.

The other end of the wire can be connected to a distant radio transmitter, voice recorder, or simply an amplifier with headphones.

Most people are surprised to learn all homes and offices come prewired, bugging-ready.

Standard telephone cables have unused pairs, and computer Ethernet cables generally only use two of the four pairs they contain. Most older office buildings also have legacy wiring which was never removed.

These "hardwired" bugs are among the most difficult to detect, which is why spies and law enforcement favor them.

Since a microphone is the main element of a hardwired bug,
I thought it might be very useful to show you how small they
can be.

These fingers are holding a real microphone, actual size.

Now you know just how much the other picture was enlarged.

Amazingly small, these microphones are mass produced by the millions.

Fortunately, most wind up in cell phones and hearing aids. However, many are sold on eBay for pennies, and then become bugs.

Not everyone knows how to find these. But, don't worry, we do.

Business Espionage: Agribusiness Now in the Crosshairs

In an industry where information is power, dishonest competitors may steal agrichemical company data and use it to their advantage. While this may sound a little like a James Bond movie plot, industrial espionage is a real event.

Take for example, the case from October 2016, when a Chinese man was sent to prison for 3 years... The crime was part of a years-long conspiracy involving several Chinese citizens aimed at stealing valuable patented corn seeds from Iowa farm fields so they could be smuggled to a Chinese agriculture conglomerate.”...

Worse still, is that this case is not an isolated incident, with Robert Anderson Jr., assistant director of counterintelligence at the F.B.I. explaining that, “Agriculture [industrial espionage] is an emerging trend that we’re seeing.” Adding that, until two years ago, “the majority of the countries and hostile intelligence services within those countries were stealing other stuff.”

Such is the power of a trade secret in modern agribusiness, that attempts to steal it are replacing efforts to learn military secrets.

Possibly, this is part of what geo-political experts call ‘food security’...

When it comes to agribusiness data, industrial espionage should leave you neither shaken nor stirred, but should simply be a case of, ‘We’ve been expecting you Mr. Bond.’ more more

Double Creepy

Oklahoma City Police arrested a man
accused of creeping around an apartment complex and spying on people. The suspect is a funeral director and embalmer.

News 9’s Adrianna Iwasinski got a copy of both the police report and court record from last Friday's arrest, and it states that police found a gun under the man’s driver's seat and they also found a video camera. more

The Sounds in Your Head That Nobody Else Hears May Come From...

...an ultrasound Audio Spotlight invented by Dr. F. Joseph Pompei.

The ultrasound, which contains frequencies far outside our range of hearing, is completely inaudible. But as the ultrasonic beam travels through the air, the inherent properties of the air cause the ultrasound to change shape in a predictable way. This gives rise to frequency components in the audible band, which can be accurately predicted, and therefore precisely controlled. By generating the correct ultrasonic signal, we can create, within the air itself, any sound desired.

Sound is literally made from thin air.

Note that the source of sound is not the physical device you see, but the invisible beam of ultrasound, which can be many meters long. This new sound source, while invisible, is very large compared to the audio wavelengths it's generating. So the resulting audio is now extremely directional, just like a beam of light. more

WindTalker - A Smartphone Intercept Technique

The way users move fingers across a phone's touchscreen alters the WiFi signals transmitted by a mobile phone, causing interruptions that an attacker can intercept, analyze, and reverse engineer to accurately guess what the user has typed on his phone or in password input fields.

This type of attack, nicknamed WindTalker, is only possible when the attacker controls a rogue WiFi access point to collect WiFi signal disturbances.

Details about the real-world attack and WindTalker, in general, are available in a research paper titled "When CSI Meets Public WiFi: Inferring Your Mobile Phone Password via WiFi Signals."

WindTalker attack has a 68%+ accuracy. more
video

Robert Vaughn, 'Man from U.N.C.L.E.' Star, Dies at 83

Robert Vaughn, the debonair, Oscar-nominated actor whose many film roles were eclipsed by his hugely popular turn in television’s The Man From U.N.C.L.E., has died. He was 83.

Vaughn died Friday morning after a brief battle with acute leukemia, according to his manager, Matthew Sullivan.



The Man From U.N.C.L.E. was an immediate hit, particularly with young people, when it debuted on NBC 1964. It was part of an avalanche of secret agent shows (I Spy, Mission: Impossible, Secret Agent), spoofs (Get Smart), books (The Spy Who Came in From the Cold) and even songs (Secret Agent Man) inspired by the James Bond films.

Vaughn’s urbane superspy Napoleon Solo teamed with Scottish actor David McCallum’s Illya Kuryakin, a soft-spoken, Russian-born agent.

The pair, who had put aside Cold War differences for a greater good, worked together each week for the mysterious U.N.C.L.E. (United Network Command for Law and Enforcement) in combating the international crime syndicate THRUSH. more

Business Espionage Problem: Car Spy Photographers Using Drones

...automakers are looking at ways to put a stop to this practice.

Click to enlarge.

One answer may be coming from the German company Deutsche Telekom, which is working with developers on ways to keep drones out of certain areas.

The American company Dedrone also has a DroneTracker system that can locate drones more than half a mile away. We're sure that more creative and interesting means of inhibiting drones are coming down the road as well. more

Spy vs Spy Sweepstakes - Win Original Artwork

Spy vs. Prize Department
MAD’s year-end issue chronicling “The 20 Dumbest People, Events and Things” of 2016 is coming soon. But you don’t have to wait to experience the dumbness of MAD!

Enter now for a chance to win an original piece of Spy Vs Spy artwork by renowned artist Peter Kuper.

This rare piece has never been published, and no, not because one of the editors spilled coffee on it. (Note: The stain has since been removed. Coffee not included in this sweepstakes.)

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY TO ENTER OR TO WIN. A PURCHASE WILL NOT INCREASE YOUR CHANCES OF WINNING. ODDS OF WINNING WILL DEPEND ON THE TOTAL NUMBER OF ELIGIBLE ENTRIES RECEIVED.The “MAD® Spy vs. Spy Original Art Sweepstakes!” begins on 11/9/16 at 10:00a.m. PT and ends on 11/30/16 at 9:59 a.m. PT. Only open to legal residents in the 50 U.S. and D.C. who are 13 years of age or older. Void in Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, U.S., Military installations in foreign countries, all other U.S. territories and possessions and wherever prohibited or restricted by law. Total Prize ARV is: $100.00. Sponsor: DC Entertainment. This Sweepstakes is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with Facebook, Twitter or any other social media sites.

Wiretapping & Electronic Surveillance - The IT Spy Guy v. Estranged Wife

PA - An employee of a midstate county faces charges of spying on his estranged wife.

36-year-old David Randall Maurer - who works for the Dauphin County information technology department - is charged with violating the wiretapping and electronic surveillance act.

State Attorney General Bruce Beemer alleges that Maurer installed spyware monitoring software that captured key strokes, screenshots and websites that his estranged wife visited on her laptop.

He allegedly used the information to log into her private email and Facebook accounts. more

Business Espionage: Bugger Caught in the Act

UK - A camera recording with audio was found under a chair during a private meeting of MPs. 

British sportswear company Sports Direct was being paid an unannounced visit by members of the House of Commons’ Business Select Committee. The MPs were there to insure that good working practices were being upheld by the company.

The MPs gave Sports Direct a one-hour warning before arriving, part of a long-running investigation into conditions at the company. During their visit, they were having a private meeting over lunch to discuss their findings. It was then that Labour MP Anna Turley spotted a staff member hiding a camera in the room where they were meeting. 

Turley says a woman came into the room to bring sandwiches to the MPs, then she crouched down to hide a camera under a chair. “I saw her trying to arrange it to get the best angle so that they could video us up at the board table and listen to what we were saying.” more

The device was identified as a small Go-Pro camera, which records excellent audio as well as video. ~Kevin