Wednesday, August 8, 2018

Dearest, I am formerly Spy Chief of Nigeria and need your assistance to move...

Nigeria's head of the intelligence service has been fired after security services staged a brief "takeover" of parliament in the capital Abuja, at a time when President Muhammadu Buhari is out of the country.

Hooded armed men from the police and Department of State Service (DSS) blocked access to the two chambers - the Senate and House of Representatives - on Tuesday morning, preventing lawmakers, workers, journalists and other visitors from entering. more

The War Against Tiny Spy Cameras in South Korea - TSCM Police Activity

In response to a growing outcry, teams organized by the police have sprung into action. Armed with infrared scanners that can spot a lens and devices that detect electrical charges, they spend hours hunting for cameras* installed by peeping Toms in changing rooms and public bathrooms...

Although concerns about spy cams and illicit filming are far from new in South Korea — the activity was dubbed “molka” years ago — the problem appears to be growing. The number of suspected perpetrators identified by police rose from 1,354 in 2011 to 5,363 in 2017; more than 95 percent were men... 

Police identified more than 26,000 victims of illicit filming between 2012 and 2016, over 80 percent of them female. But many never find out they are victims: The real number “would be 10 times higher than the police figure” if the full extent were known, said Oh Yoon-sung, a criminology professor at Soon­chunhyang University... more

* 20% off.

Tuesday, August 7, 2018

Anatomy of a Bankruptcy

CA - The Gardena-based parent company of the retail chains Fallas and Anna’s Linens said Monday it filed for bankruptcy reorganization and plans to close 74 of its 344 stores. National Stores Inc., a family-owned firm, operates in 22 states and Puerto Rico...

National Stores said the bankruptcy filing was due to certain under-performing stores and severe weather in various regions that hurt sales.

In addition, the company suffered a data breach in the second half of last year in which some customers’ payment-card information was exposed at dozens of stores, and as a result “access to operating funds diminished” for the company, National Stores said. more

Three reasons for the failure, in the order stated:
  1. Under-performing stores.
  2. Severe weather.
  3. Data breach diminished operating funds.
Number One is manageable. 
Number Two is vague. 
Number Three is a killer.
The list should be reversed, to show order of importance order.

Takeaway... Information security (from IT to TSCM) can make or break any business.

Sunday, August 5, 2018

This Week in Spy News

US - The July arrest and indictment of Maria Butina, a 29-year-old Russian woman accused of being a spy, sent shockwaves through Washington and left the political world wondering where she had come from. Her Instagram page showed a glimpse of what her life looked like in Russia while she was allegedly "laying the groundwork" to move to the United States and conduct high-level espionage on behalf of the Russian government. more

UK- SPY chiefs are to develop futuristic technology that will predict when and where terrorist attacks will take place. They are pumping millions into a project called “Unblinking Eye” to identify and keep watch on people who pose a security threat. A new cutting-edge system will monitor and analyse human behaviour and help security services act before an outrage is committed. It mirrors the sci-fi movie Minority Report, starring Tom Cruise, where cops use psychic technology to arrest murderers before they strike. more

US - A suspected Russian spy was employed for more than a decade at the US Embassy in Moscow before being fired last year, a senior administration official tells CNN. The woman, a Russian national, worked for the US Secret Service for years before she came under suspicion during one of the State Department regional security office's routine security reviews in 2016, the official said. The security office found the woman was having regular, unauthorized meetings with the Russian intelligence service, the FSB. more

US - Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s office was infiltrated by a Chinese spy who worked as her driver and attended official functions on her behalf for 20 years, according to new reports from Politico and The San Francisco Chronicle.

USB Memory Security - Hand GrenadeUS - An engineer employed by General Electric Co. was arrested by the FBI and charged with using sophisticated techniques to steal digital files on the company's turbine technology to benefit his interest in Chinese companies that compete with GE... The federal criminal complaint says that in 2014, Zheng "downloaded more than 19,000 files from GE's computer network onto an external storage device, believed by GE investigators to have been a personal thumb drive." Federal authorities said that Zheng is a U.S. citizen and also holds citizenship in China. more

S. Korea - The country is in the grip of what's been described as a spy camera epidemic. Hidden cameras capture women - and sometimes men - undressing, going to the toilet, or even in changing rooms in clothing stores, gyms and swimming pools. The videos are posted online on pop-up pornography sites. Activists in Seoul now warn that unless more is done to prevent it, this type of crime is likely to spread to other countries and will prove difficult to stop. more (Too late. It already has.)

US - A local handyman has been charged with spying on his customers’ personal lives by installing hidden cameras in homes where he had done work. Alton police arrested Peter Mugford and charged him with five felony counts of unlawful wiretapping, two counts of burglary, violation of privacy, and stalking... Mugford allegedly used his profession as a contractor/handyman to get access to client homes and place hidden cameras in bedrooms, bathrooms, and other private areas of the home. Mugford would then return to the homes without the owners knowledge or consent to retrieve cameras and footage. more

...and The Hollywood Reports submits its Top 10 Best Spy Comedies list. See if you concur. My pick for #1 is Top Secret.

A Spycam Backlash in South Korea

South Korea - Thousands of women wearing red shirts endured the suffocating heat... to protest against the illegal filming of women...

According to South Korean police, a total of 5,363 hidden camera crimes occurred last year*, and similar crimes are still occurring.

Last month, a high school boy was caught filming in a girl’s restroom. Separately, a man in his 30s who sold 2,845 videos illegally filmed in public restrooms was caught as well...

Hidden camera cases coming up over and over again has forced women to become more cautious about using public restrooms. They have come up with ways to spot hidden cameras, such as filling in any holes they find in restrooms and turning off all the lights in bathrooms to check for camera lights.

The organizers, who asked reporters not to ask demonstrators any questions, let their chants and pickets do the talking.
The first protest of the "Inconvenient Courage" kicked off in May, drawing more than 10,000 protestors. And the second and third protests drew another 15,000 and 18,000, respectively.

Saturday's protests, according to the organizers, nearly quadrupled those numbers. more

* This is only the discovered and reported incidents. Most are never discovered.



Tuesday, July 31, 2018

Corporate Espionage Alert: Deep Portrait Videos – Not Just a Government Problem

The bad actors have stepped up their game with perhaps the most potentially devastating cyber ruse of all – the high-tech “Deepfake” videos...

Deepfake videos are the residue of new internet technology that supplies almost anyone the ability to alter reality so that subjects can be manipulated to say anything the hacker wants, from the ludicrous and inflammatory to the downright incriminating...appears so real it is almost impossible to spot the bogus video.

The potential security impact of these altered videos has both the federal government and the U.S. Intelligence community on high alert...

“This started several years ago with fake videos and then it turned into Deepfake videos and it’s currently progressing to deep portrait videos,” says Bob Anderson, who is a Principal in The Chertoff Group’s global Strategic Advisory Services and a former national security executive and former Executive Assistant Director with the FBI...


“This is a potentially huge national security threat for a variety of reasons. Picture telecommunication calls or video conference calls that an adversary could potentially interject a fake deep portrait video of a three-star general or CEO of a company directing members of that company or organization to partake in potential detrimental national security or criminal actions,” Anderson says. “Nation-states like Russia, China and Iran could potentially utilize this technology for a variety of counterintelligence, corporate espionage, economic espionage and political influence campaigns across the United States.” more

Monday, July 30, 2018

More Security Cameras Vulnerable to Spying

A popular wireless security camera designed to safeguard businesses and homes was vulnerable to a spying hack.

The flaw meant it was possible to hijack video and audio streamed from other people's properties by making a minor tweak to Swann Security's app.

Researchers found the problem after the BBC reported a case where one customer had received another's recordings.

Australia-based Swann and OzVision - the Israeli provider of its cloud tech - said the issue had now been fixed.

Swann said that the vulnerability had been limited to one model - the SWWHD-Intcam, also known as the Swann Smart Security Camera - which first went on sale in October 2017. Retailers including Maplin, Currys, Debenhams, Walmart and Amazon have sold them.

However, there are concerns that other companies' cameras supported by OzVision could have problems. more

It is argued that the company offers cloud service to around three million smart cameras and users rely upon its app to connect to their IoT devices, and if anyone can gain access to live stream then all the smart cameras stand at risk. These include the Flir FX smart camera and other brands apart from Swann. The problem lies in the tunnel protocol that is responsible for verifying is a particular viewer is authorized to access the live stream or not.  more

Saturday, July 28, 2018

Dad Charged With Felony Eavesdropping - Phone Ownership Irrelevant

MI - An Antrim County man faces two felony charges after authorities said he recorded conversations between his ex-wife and his 12-year-old daughter for nearly three years...

Carlson, who has custody of his daughter ... had been using a Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) setting to record all telephone calls associated with his cellphone number, according to a report from the Michigan State Police.

Investigators contend Carlson let his daughter use the phone so she could talk to her mother, Kellie Poehner, who lives in Genesee County, but did not inform Poehner or his daughter that he was recording the calls, nor did he ask for their consent. Both believed the conversations were private, the report said.

Carlson is suspected of emailing some of the recordings in March to John Poehner, who is married to Kellie Poehner. That alleged action prompted an investigation that led to the distribution and dissemination charge... more

Friday, July 27, 2018

Silicon Valley – Den of Spies

Foreign spies have been showing up uninvited, to San Francisco and Silicon Valley for a very long time.

According to former U.S. intelligence officials, that’s true today more than ever. In fact, they warn—especially because of increasing Russian and Chinese aggressiveness, and the local concentration of world-leading science and technology firms—there’s a full-on epidemic of espionage on the West Coast right now. And even more worrisome, many of its targets are unprepared to deal with the growing threat.

Unlike on the East Coast, foreign intel operations here aren’t as focused on the hunt for diplomatic secrets, political intelligence or war plans. The open, experimental, cosmopolitan work and business culture of Silicon Valley in particular has encouraged a newer, “softer,” “nontraditional” type of espionage, said former intelligence officials—efforts that mostly target trade secrets and technology.

“It’s a very subtle form of intelligence collection that is more business connected and oriented,” one told me. But this economic espionage is also ubiquitous. Spies “are very much part of the everyday environment” here, said this person. Another former intelligence official told me that, at one point recently, a full 20 percent of all the FBI’s active counterintelligence-related intellectual property cases had originated in the Bay Area. (The FBI declined to comment for this story.) more

Auction: Some Remarkable Pieces of Telephone History

If you like old school gear that seems like it would kill you if you look at it wrong, well, we have an auction for you.
Click to Enlarge.

Auction Starts
Aug 4, 2018 11am EDT

The Telephone Pioneers of America was a group founded by various employees and bigwigs at telecom companies back in 1911. Alexander Graham Bell, the man Americans are often taught invented the telephone, was an early member.

At first, it was a way to create a community around the various people who pioneered the tech of telephony, then it shifted to a philanthropic mission. These days, it functions as a network of volunteers that help out in their community. Along the way, the non-profit set up a bunch of little museums around the U.S. dedicated to preserving old equipment and ephemera related to the history of the telephone.

Now, two of those branches are closing and you can buy their goods in an auction online or IRL on August 4th. Bruneau & Co, an auction house based in Cranston, Rhode Island, will handle the bidding. more

How Not to Write Your Name Electronically on Your Hotel Room Door

Reprint of LinkedIn post by Brian Creter...
"At my hotel last week in Los Angeles, I walked up and down my hallway and was able to identify multiple hotel guests who used their full and very unique legal names on their phones, which shows on personal wifi hotspots (see below). 
 
This is essentially like writing your name on a stickie and putting on your hotel door, or wearing a name tag while sitting in the airport. Range is typically 25 to 50 ft. so you can usually narrow down to one of several rooms. 
 
Go to Settings > General > About > Name OR change in iTunes. Also, remove any info that identifies the device (i.e. iPhone, iPad, etc.)."

Thursday, July 26, 2018

The Telephone Unmasked - The New York Times - October 13, 1877

The Telephone Unmasked

Published:  October 13, 1877

It is time that the atrocious nature of the telephone should be fully exposed, and its inventors, of whom there are any quantity, held up to execration.

When this nefarious instrument was first introduced, it was pretended that its purpose was an innocent one. We were told that the telephone would enable a man in New-York to hear what a man in Philadelphia might say; and though it was difficult to understand why anybody should ever want to listen to a Philadelphian’s remarks - which, notoriously, consist exclusively of allusions to the Centennial Exhibition and an alleged line of American steam-ships - there was nothing necessarily immoral in this possible use of the telephone.

Then it was claimed that by means of the telephone conversations could be carried on with other than Philadelphians, and that political speeches delivered in Washington could be heard in any city of the continent.

As the President was at that time making speeches in Vermont instead of Washington, the public was not alarmed by this announcement, and it was not until the telephonic conspirators mentioned that the uproar of a brass-band could be transmitted to any distance through the telephone that any general feeling of uneasiness was developed.

Nevertheless, the vast capabilities for mischief of the telephone, and the real purpose of its unprincipled inventors have been studiously concealed, and it is only by accident that the greatness and imminence of the danger to which the public is exposed have suddenly been revealed.

Suspicion ought to have been awakened by the recent publication of the fact that if the lamp-posts of our City were to be connected by wires, every confidential remark made to a lamp-post by a belated Democratic statesman could be reproduced by a telephone connected with any other lamp-post. It is true that this publication was ostensibly made in the interest of the Police force, and it was recommended that patrolmen should use the lamp-posts as means of communication with Police Head-quarters. It was evident, however, that the result would be to make every lamp-post a spy upon midnight wayfarers.

Men who had trusted to friendly lamp-posts for years, and embraced them with the upmost confidence in their silence and discretion, would find themselves shamelessly betrayed and their unsuspecting soliloquies literally reported to their indignant families; strange to say this suggestive hint of the powers of the telephone attracted no attention, and has ere this been in all probability forgotten.

A series of incidents which has lately occurred in Providence has, however, clearly shown the frightful capabilities of the telephone. Two men, to whom, so far as is known, no improper motive can be attributed, were recently experimenting with a telephone, the wire of which was stretched over the roofs of innumerable buildings, and was estimated to be fully four miles in length. They relate that on the first evening of their telephonic dissipation they heard men and women singing songs and eloquent clergymen preaching ponderous sermons; and that they detected several persons in the act of practicing upon brass instruments. This sort of thing was repeating every evening, while on Sunday morning a perfect deluge of partially conglomerated sermons rolled in upon them.

These are the main facts mentioned by the two men in what may be called their official report of their experiments, but it is asserted that they heard other things which they did not venture to openly repeat.

The remarks of thousands of midnight cats were borne to their listening ears. The confidential conversations of hundreds of husbands and wives were whispered through the treacherous telephone, and though the remarks of Mr. and Mrs. Smith were sometimes inextricably entangled with those of Mr. and Mrs Brown, and it was frequently impossible to tell from which particular wife came the direful threat, “O! I’ll just let you know,” or from what strong husband in his agony came the cry, “Leggo that hair!” the two astonished telephone experimenters learned enough of the secrets of the leading families of Providence to render it a hazardous matter for any resident of that city to hereafter accept a nomination for any office.

Now is has been ascertained that the wire of this telephone was not in contact with any other wire, and thus the hypothesis that the sounds heard by the two men were messages in process of transmission by the usual telegraphic wires is untenable. Moreover, a little reflection will show that cats do not send telegraphic messages, and that leading citizens do not transmit by telegraph petitions to their wives advocating a policy of conciliation in respect to hair.

The scientific persons whom the two men have consulted have no hesitation in saying that the telephonic wire picked up all the sounds in its neighborhood by the process of induction.

When the wire passed over a church, it took up the waves of sound set in motion by the preacher and reproduced them on the telephone. In like manner it collected the sounds from the concert-halls and dwelling-houses over the roofs of which it passed, and the peculiar distinctness with which is transmitted the remarks of cats was due to the fact that it must have passed in close proximity to several popular feline resorts.

We can now comprehend the danger of the telephone. If any telephonic miscreant connects a telephone with one of the countless telegraphic wires that pass over the roofs of the City there will be an immediate end of all privacy. Whatever is said in the back piazza by youthful students of the satellites of Mars will be proclaimed by way of the house-top to the eavesdropping telephone operator. No matter to what extent a man may close his doors and windows, and hermetically seal his key-holes and furnace-registers with towels and blankets, whatever he may say, either to himself or a companion, will be overhead.

Absolute silence will be our only safety. Conversation will be carried on exclusively in writing and courtship will be conducted by the use of a system of ingenious symbols. An invention which thus mentally makes silence the sole condition of safety cannot be too severely denounced, and while violence even in self-defense, is always to be deprecated, there can be but little doubt that the death of the inventors and manufacturers of the telephone would do much toward creating that feeling of confidence which financiers tell us must precede any revival of business.

Trust No One, or Life-locked

via Kreb's on Security...
Identity theft protection firm LifeLock — a company that’s built a name for itself based on the promise of helping consumers protect their identities online — may have actually exposed customers to additional attacks from ID thieves and phishers. 

The company just fixed a vulnerability on its site that allowed anyone with a Web browser to index email addresses associated with millions of customer accounts, or to unsubscribe users from all communications from the company.

The upshot of this weakness is that cyber criminals could harvest the data and use it in targeted phishing campaigns that spoof LifeLock’s brand. more

If you use LifeLock carefully check future emails using their name before clicking on anything. Also, check occasionally to make sure you haven't been unsubscribed. ~Kevin

Sunday, July 22, 2018

Richard Simmons: P.I. Who Allegedly Planted Bugging Device Charged

The private investigator who allegedly planted a tracking device on Richard Simmons' car has been charged with a crime.

Scott Brian Matthews was charged with 2 counts of the crime of unlawfully using a tracking device.

Prosecutors say Matthews planted the device on the car Richard bought for his housekeeper, Teresa Reveles. They say he planted it so he could shadow Simmons and see if he was going to doctors or hospitals. more

A New Type Of Inductor - Last Barrier To Ultra-Miniaturized Electronics Is Broken

For those keeping an eye on the future of electronic surveillance, this is really interesting news. Others may find the story a bit technical and dry. ~Kevin

In the race for ever-improving technology, there are two related technical capabilities that drive our world forward: speed and size...

But at the same time these advances have comes in leaps and bounds, one fundamental circuit element — the inductor — has had its design remain exactly the same...

The breakthrough... a phenomenon known as kinetic inductance...
Click to enlarge.
That’s where the work of Banerjee’s Nanoelectronics Research Lab and their collaborators comes in. By exploiting the phenomenon of kinetic inductance, they were able to, for the first time, demonstrate the effectiveness a fundamentally different kind of inductor that didn’t rely on Faraday’s magnetic inductance.

Instead of using conventional metal inductors, they used graphene — carbon bonded together into an ultra-hard, highly-conductive configuration that also has a large kinetic inductance — to make the highest inductance-density material ever created. more