Feds Charge 4 State-Owned Companies with Economic Espionage

U.S. Four Chinese state-owned companies were arraigned in federal court in California on charges of economic espionage, prosecutors announced Friday.

Pangang Group Company, Ltd. and three of its subsidiaries allegedly conspired with Chinese nationals Hou Shengdong and Dong Yingjie to acquire stolen or misappropriated trade secrets involving the production technology for chloride-route titanium dioxide, also known as TiO2, from the DuPont company...

TiO2 is commonly used as a white pigment in paints after the use of lead oxide was banned several years ago...It is also used as a pigment in inks, plastics, cosmetics, soap, toothpaste and food.

"DuPont had developed the technology and controlled a significant amount of the world's TiO2 sales," prosecutors said. "The defendants are alleged to have obtained confidential trade secret information including photographs related to TiO2 plant technologies and facilities."

The Pangang companies, along with Hou and Dong, are also accused of paying an Oakland company $27,000,000 between 2006 and 2011 for assistance in obtaining DuPont's trade secrets. more Official Press Release

Couple Find Spycam in Vacation Rental Unit

A British couple vacationing in Toronto were horrified to discover a spy camera hidden in a digital clock at their rental apartment.

Dougie Hamilton, 34, from Glasgow, realized that the clock was “connected to a wire like a phone charger”.

He now fears whoever planted the camera at the Airbnb may have recorded clandestine footage of him and his girlfriend.

Hamilton told Scotland’s Daily Record that the property’s host had at least half a dozen other properties for lease on Airbnb, accompanied by numerous reviews.

“I just happened to be facing this clock and was staring at it for about 10 minutes. There was just something in my head that made me feel a bit uneasy.”

A recent video he saw on social media about spy cameras made him increasingly concerned. more

Lesson: Trust your instincts. The thought would never have occurred to you if everything were fine. This applies to all electronic surveillance devices: bugs, taps, smartphone and computer spyware, spy cameras, and corporate espionage. ~Kevin

In other news... (You can't make this stuff up.)

A woman accused of gunning down her chef husband is a self-published romance writer who once penned an essay titled "How to Murder Your Husband."

She has also written such titles as "The Wrong Husband," a 2015 novel about a woman who escapes an abusive spouse during a shipwreck in the Mediterranean and falls in love with one of the men sent to find her.

"Divorce is expensive, and do you really want to split your possessions?" she wrote in a section about financial motives. more

Apparently, others have had similar thoughts...

Spycam Conviction — Chalk One Up for the Good Guys

Roger Wallach, 38, of Philadelphia, PA was sentenced today to 240 months in federal prison for manufacturing videos and images of two girls, ages 10 and 11, over a period of three months.

Wallach previously pleaded guilty to nine counts of manufacturing and attempting to manufacture child pornography, and one count of possession of child pornography. As part of his guilty plea, Wallach admitted that he concealed a spy watch in a bathroom and surreptitiously recorded the 10- and 11-year-old girls as they undressed, used the bathroom, and showered. He also used the webcam on his laptop computer to record them undressing and in various states of nudity. All total, he had hundreds of sexually explicit images of both girls that he saved on his cell phone, in his iCloud account, on his laptop, and on the memory of his spy watch.

In addition to the term of imprisonment, the court imposed a 20-year term of supervised release and ordered that the defendant undergo a sex offender evaluation and treatment after his release from federal prison. more

Industrial Espionage: The Deafening Sounds of a Rip-Off

Apple designed an iPhone. 

Motorola wanted one, too. 

Industrial espionage?!?! 

You decide.

Welcome to the business zoo.

Spybuster Security Tip #748: The Lost Smartphone Recovery Trick

Chances are, if you lose your smartphone the screen will look like this to whoever finds it. 
(If your phone is not password protected do that now.)

This presents a problem to the good Samaritan who finds it. They don’t know to whom the phone should be returned.

Sure, you could call the phone and hope they answer, or try using the ‘find my phone feature’, but that takes time and a positive result is iffy.

Solution…

Give the finder a helpful clue as to who you are. Customize your background wallpaper to include some information about you.

Including an email address is a very good start. Now they know how to contact you. If you want to keep your real email address private, create a nondescript google/yahoo/hotmail account just for this purpose.

If your email address also contains a company URL they might be close enough to drop the phone off at the reception desk for you.

Adding an alternate phone number where you can be reached, or adding the old enticing phrase, Reward if Found, are additional options.

It is easy to change wallpapers on smartphones. Just google “[your smartphone manufacturer] change wallpaper” and the directions will pop up.

Creating a customized wallpaper is almost as easy. You can do it with any photoshop type app, or by using a free on-line service.

Resources…
https://mashable.com/2013/08/12/wallpaper-iphone/
https://datarecovery.wondershare.com/best-iphone-wallpaper-maker.html
https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/make-custom-wallpaper-android/
https://www.picmonkey.com/blog/make-your-own-phone-wallpaper
https://www.canva.com/create/wallpapers/
https://spark.adobe.com/make/background-maker/

Business Espionage Info-Theft: When they can't hack it, they grab the employees.

Investigators discovered what they believed to be a major infiltration campaign.

Two years before Equifax Inc. stunned the world with the announcement it had been hacked, the credit-reporting company believed it was the victim of another theft...

In the previously undisclosed incident, security officials feared that former employees had removed thousands of pages of proprietary information before leaving and heading to jobs in China. Materials included code for planned new products, human-resources files and manuals...

According to the people familiar with the probe, the investigators, by talking to Equifax employees and examining email accounts and LinkedIn messages sent to them, saw indications that recruiters purporting to represent Ant affiliate Alibaba had offered to triple salaries for certain ethnically Chinese Equifax employees—and provided instructions on specific Equifax information they should bring along if they jumped ship. more

Downer of the Day – Paranoia Is Now a Best Practice

Bust out the tinfoil—the data security crisis is worse than you ever imagined...

he 2010s will be remembered as the first decade in which we, the people, paid for the pleasure of welcoming Big Brother into our lives.

When George Orwell depicted an inescapable surveillance state — telescreens in every room monitoring every move, recording every sound, and reporting it all to the authoritarian leader — in his classic novel 1984, he probably never imagined that in 2018, folks would pay $600 (plus a recurring monthly fee) for the privilege of carrying a telescreen in their pockets. more

Buy yours now.

Computer Screens Emit Sounds that Reveal Data

Computer scientists from Tel Aviv University, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Michigan have discovered a computer version of synesthesia that allows them to determine what’s being displayed on a monitor by listening to sounds emitted by the monitor.

As you might suspect, those sounds are very faint and not easily detected by human hearing. But they are there as tiny high-pitched tones produced by a monitor’s power supply in response to the varying demands of the screen display. But special equipment isn’t required to exploit the vulnerability that’s produced by this characteristic of most monitors.

In their paper, which was released on Aug. 21, the scientists showed that those sounds could be recorded using the microphone in a standard consumer webcam, by a smartphone or by a digital assistant such as an Amazon Echo or Google Home device.

Furthermore, this exploit does not require the presence on site of the attacker. They can record the sounds over a remote call, such as one from Google Hangouts. The amount of information that the researchers were able to discern using their method was remarkable... more

mSpy Goes Platinum - Leaks 2 Million Records

mSpy, a commercial spyware solution designed to help you spy on kids and partners, has leaked over 2 million records including software purchases and iCloud usernames and authentication tokens of devices running mSky.

The data appears to have come from an unsecured database that allowed security researchers to pull out millions of records.

mSpy is a platform that allows parents to see what their children are doing online and, presumably, allow partners to keep tabs on each other. more

This is the second time mSpy has been hacked... that we know of.

Neutralizer for Car Infotainment Systems

Privacy4Cars, a mobile app designed to help erase Personally Identifiable Information (PII) from modern vehicles, recently was released as a free download on iOS and Android devices.

The Privacy4Cars app, according to the company, enables consumers and businesses to quickly and efficiently delete personal data retained by modern vehicle infotainment systems. The app was developed by Andrea Amico, an expert in vehicle privacy and cybersecurity.


Privacy4Cars' patent-pending process provides customized, visual step-by-step tutorials to help users quickly erase personal information such as phone numbers, call logs, location history and garage door codes from vehicle infotainment systems. more

Eavesdropping — at the Ian Potter Museum of Art Melbourne

WHAT: Eavesdropping — Tue, 24. July–Sun, 28. October 2018
WHERE: Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne, Australia
ADMISSION: Free

Eaves­drop­ping is a unique col­lab­o­ra­tion between Liquid Archi­tec­ture, Mel­bourne Law School and the Ian Potter Museum of Art, com­pris­ing an exhi­bi­tion, a public pro­gram, series of work­ing groups and tour­ing event which explores the pol­i­tics of lis­ten­ing through work by lead­ing artists, researchers, writ­ers and activists from Aus­tralia and around the world.

EAVES­DROP­PING used to be a crime. Accord­ing to William Black­stone, in his Com­men­taries on the Laws of Eng­land (1769): ​‘eaves­drop­pers, or such as listen under walls or win­dows, or the eaves of a house, to hear­ken after dis­course, and there­upon to frame slan­der­ous and mis­chie­vous tales, are a common nui­sance and pre­sentable at the court-leet.’

Click to enlarge

Two hun­dred and fifty years later, eaves­drop­ping isn’t just legal, it’s ubiq­ui­tous. What was once a minor public order offence has become one of the most impor­tant politico-legal prob­lems of our time, as the Snow­den rev­e­la­tions made abun­dantly clear. Eaves­drop­ping: the ever-increas­ing access to, cap­ture and con­trol of our sonic worlds by state and cor­po­rate inter­ests. But eaves­drop­ping isn’t just about big data, sur­veil­lance and secu­rity... more

"New" Theory on the Cuba / China Sonic Headaches

The mystery illness afflicting American diplomats in Cuba and China could be a side effect of bugging or surveillance rather than a sonic weapon attack, according to a US researcher.

Dr Beatrice Golomb, professor of medicine at the University of California San Diego, said the reported symptoms strongly matched the known effects of radio frequency and microwave radiation.

“Surveillance is my lead hypothesis, as opposed to something like attacks or weaponry,” said Golomb, whose research will be published in the journal Neural Computation on September 15. more

Security Scrapbook fans already knew this might be a botched spying attempt, and how it worked, back in August 2017. ~Kevin

Drive-by Hackers Can Spy on Millions of Chrome Users Through Their Webcams

Drive-by hackers can spy on millions of Chrome users through their WEBCAMS experts claim, after finding a security glitch in the browser.

• According to UK cyber-security experts, hackers could attack entire streets.
• They might be able to steal passwords and activate webcams in an attack.
• Experts reported the issue to Google earlier this year but was told that it was working fine.

The glitch affects people who have logged onto their router as admin and saved details in their browser. more

Smart Home Technology Being Used by Abusers to Control and Terrorize

Imagine the temperature changing on your thermostat without you doing it, or seeing your lights turn off and on without you touching the switch.

Or your Alexa blaring music in the middle of the night. Or finding hidden cameras placed in your home -- without your knowledge or consent.

These are the sort of things abusive partners and exes can use to try to control their loved ones and if it's happening to you, you need to report it.

"It was awful, absolutely awful," said Aubrey, a Houston woman who spoke with News 6 sister station KPRC about her fiancé secretly watching her in her home. "Everywhere I went, everything I did, he could hear it. He could see it. It was awful."

Aubrey says after she and her fiancé moved in together, she discovered he had installed cameras throughout the house without her knowledge or consent. She said she discovered it by accident while using his cellphone...

"Every time we get an advance in technology, the bad guys seem to take advantage of it," Oviedo police Lt. Travis Cockcroft said.

So what are some things you can do to break free of an abuser's digital trap?

• Make sure you change your passwords on all of your accounts.
• Reset your Wi-Fi settings to something only you would know.
• Educate yourself about what your smart home devices can do.
• Reset privacy settings.
• Keep a journal of any peculiar activity with dates and times and description of what happened. 

more and more