Washington, DC and The Running of the Spies

Washington, DC - Waves of civil servants, military and law enforcement officers, business people, students, diplomats and tourists saturate the city.

That is the scene on a typical weekday in the world’s most powerful city — whose business revolves around secret meetings, information and documents. Woven into that orderly bedlam are sophisticated networks of foreign nationals whose sole purpose is to steal secrets.

They are spies.

According to the International Spy Museum in D.C., an educational and historical center of U.S. intelligence documentation and artifacts, there are “more than 10,000 spies in Washington.”

While there may be some quibbling about the actual numbers, the FBI agrees with the premise.

“It’s unprecedented — the threat from our foreign adversaries, specifically China on the economic espionage and the espionage front,” said Brian Dugan, Assistant Special Agent in Charge for Counterintelligence with the FBI’s Washington Field Office.

As this unparalleled wave of international espionage, aided by technology, explodes in D.C., the variety of spies has diversified, as well.

“A spy is nondescript. A spy is going to be someone that’s going to be a student in school, a visiting professor, your neighbor. It could be a colleague or someone that shares the soccer field with you,” Dugan said. more

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Business Espionage - Thought of the Day - Loose Lips

Written by Chris Erickson is a combat veteran and former Green Beret, with extensive experience deployed to various locations across the world.  

One of the most shocking things for me entering the corporate world after serving on several Special Forces teams was how lax many organizations in highly competitive industries were with information about their operations.

It doesn’t take industrial espionage to sabotage a company, just poor operation security. In World War II, the posters warned us that “Loose Lips Sink Ships” and that’s just as true today as it was then.

Operational Security, or OPSEC as we called it in the military, should be a part of your organizational culture, from the bottom to the top. Simple things such as reminding people not to discuss projects or clients in the elevator or at lunch reduce the amount of exposure and risk of compromise for both yourself and your stakeholders.

It’s far less likely that nefarious agents or bad actors are going to give up sensitive information than the possibility you’ll be compromised by the careless and/or reckless behavior of your employees. more

Spying on Your Pet Has Just Become Easier

Comcast has released a new Artificial Intelligence-powered pet filter feature to its Xfinity Camera that allows customers to check in on their pets throughout the day.

The filter is an addition to their security camera and uses AI to quickly sort through hours of footage to identify only clips featuring owners pets. Customers are able to see their pets at home through an app on their phones.

The product came in response to Americans’ increasing obsession with watching their pets on security cameras while away from home, officials said.

Comcast published a survey that determined just how much pet owners enjoy spying on their furry friends...

Results also found that 93% of participants said checking in on their pet is one of the best parts of their day. Almost half of the participants (42%) said they checked in on their pets four or more times a day. more

How often are spycams found in short-term rental properties?

From the IPX1031 Insight Blog

Click to enlarge.

A Tanning Salon Spycam & Molka Madness

IN - A Sullivan man is facing charges of voyeurism after an investigation at a local tanning salon found a hidden camera in one of the tanning rooms. ...a woman reported that a video was taken of her by a cell phone located in a vent in the tanning room. more

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In South Korea, the use of hidden cameras to spy on women in public places - known as molka - is a massive problem. This high-tech voyeurism is made possible by the availability of tiny spycams.

The government is now taking the crime more seriously. It has introduced heavier punishments for perpetrators, shut down websites used to share molka footage, and stepped up checks of public places. more

Government funded Technical Surveillance Countermeasures (TSCM) inspections...

Last year, tens of thousands of women took to the streets of Seoul in protest. 

Apple-knocker Forensic Advancement - iOS & Android are No Longer Secure.

The “arms race” of mobile forensics – ever-tougher encryption and the breakneck operations to crack it – has become more of a public tug-of-war than ever before.

Cellebrite, the largest player in the mobile-forensics industry, unveiled its UFED Premium last Friday. Along with the announcement came the bombshell: that it can now get into any Apple iOS device, and many of the high-end Android devices. 

“An exclusive solution for law enforcement to unlock and extract data from all iOS and Android devices,” the company said in a tweet.

Those devices have historically been the toughest to crack... more

Security Director Alert: Espionage-as-a-Service Takes Hold on the Dark Web

The cybercrime underground has become a service-driven, on-demand economy, including making available targeted corporate espionage services. According to an analysis, about 40 percent of Dark Web merchants offer spearphishing-as-a-service and targeted hacking services, aimed at infiltrating Fortune 500 businesses and other high-value targets...

“These services typically come with service plans for conducting the hack, with prices ranging from $150 to $10,000 depending on the company involved and the extent to which the malware was customized for targeted attacks,” McGuire explained in the report, released Thursday at Infosecurity Europe...

“Purchasing corporate invoices is easy on the dark net, with prices ranging from $5-$10,” said McGuire. “These documents can be used to defraud organizations or as part of phishing campaigns to trick employees into opening malicious links or email attachments, which deliver malware that triggers a breach or gives hackers a backdoor into corporate networks which could be sold on the dark net.” more

Guess Who... Offered Bonus to Workers who Stole Confidential Information from Companies Around the World

A 10-count indictment unsealed today in the Western District of Washington State charges Huawei Device Co., Ltd. and Huawei Device Co. USA with theft of trade secrets conspiracy, attempted theft of trade secrets, seven counts of wire fraud, and one count of obstruction of justice.

The indictment, returned by a grand jury on January 16, details Huawei’s efforts to steal trade secrets from Bellevue, Washington based T-Mobile USA and then obstruct justice when T-Mobile threatened to sue Huawei in U.S. District Court in Seattle.

The alleged conduct described in the indictment occurred from 2012 to 2014, and includes an internal Huawei announcement that the company was offering bonuses to employees who succeeded in stealing confidential information from other companies. more

White Paper: Business Espionage: The Employee Competitor… and what to do about it.

Store Manager Used Hidden Camera to Spy on Customers in Restroom

A North Carolina man was arrested after the hidden camera he allegedly used to spy on people in the bathroom was discovered, the Black Mountain Police Department said.

Robert Thomas Orr was charged Friday with six counts of felony secret peeping, police said in a news release shared on Facebook. Police said Orr used an electronic device to spy on people in another room...

The room in question was a public women’s restroom at Black Mountain Stove & Chimney, where a spy camera was discovered behind an air filter, the Citizen Times reported...

(Example of a portable type of air filter camera.)

Officials said Orr owns multiple properties, including some rental units, and an investigation of the iPad showed one of the “peeping images” is of a tenant... more

In other spycam news...
A Planet Fitness employee has been arrested for allegedly hiding a camera in a tanning room. Denzel Fraizer, 24, was arrested for video voyeurism... Detectives say a female victim noticed something strange after she had finished tanning, realized it was a camera and reported it to workers... Police say the camera had been live streaming and not recording. more

‘Epidemic’ of Bugging Devices Reported

More funding and legal powers are needed for police to stop a surge of stalkers using eavesdropping devices to spy on victims, experts have warned. 

Firms paid to detect the bugs say they’re finding more and more of the devices which are readily available on online marketplaces like Amazon and eBay.

Jack Lazzereschi, Technical Director of bug sweeping company Shapestones, says cases of stalking and victims being blackmailed with intimate footage shot in secret has doubled in the past two years...

People are paying as little as £15 ($19.00) for listening devices and spy cameras hidden inside desk lamps, wall sockets, phone charger cables, USB sticks and picture frames. Users insert a sim card into a hidden slot and call a number to listen in on their unwitting targets. People using hidden cameras can watch what’s happening using an apps on their phones.

Jack says the devices are so effective, cheap and hard to trace to their users, law enforcement prefer using them over expensive old-school devices. more

Corporate Secret Theft Through the Roof

IP theft is on the rise, and the threat landscape is way beyond the old days of targeted corporate espionage. 

There are potentially tens of thousands of entities who want a business’s data and can profit from it, one way or another. This undercuts the potential success of its rightful owners and damages the future of the business. The good news, however, is that there are several strategies which can be deployed to protect IP, and these lessons can be applied across the entire business...

The first step of this process is understanding the nature of security threats to IP. Technological development and the interconnected nature of the digital world has made IP theft far easier than ever before, especially given that the majority of security breaches that go undetected. more

Pinky Promise from Huawei

A top Huawei executive said Tuesday that the company is willing to sign a "no-spy agreement" with the United States to reassure U.S. leaders who say the company's technology could be used for surveillance. The offer is similar to proposals the Chinese tech giant has made to the United Kingdom and Germany, and it comes after weeks of intense pressure from the Trump administration. more

This Week in Spycam News

UK - A creepy landlord put a secret camera in a bathroom to film a female tenant...she noticed a black cylindrical object in the bathroom but did not pay too much notice...after three to four days she saw a red light blinking and found the device had a memory card. more

Walmart

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IN - A former Southern Indiana law enforcement officer accused of videotaping a child under 18 getting in and out of the shower. He's also accused of setting up hidden cameras to secretly watch that same child and another one. more

NYC - The husband of a Manhattan prosecutor could face criminal charges after he and his wife allegedly videotaped their nanny undressing and showering in their bathroom...she spotted the hidden camera, disguised to look like a black iPhone charger. “I noticed a glare, and I was just like, wait this is odd, so I pulled it out of the socket, and the last video is me looking at it like, ‘What is this?’” more

CT - Police reported that a suspect in the Connecticut College voyeurism case has been arrested for a second time...the incidents involved cellphone cameras that were pointed at women who were preparing to shower at residence hall gender-inclusive bathrooms. more

UK - An animal rights investigator allegedly caught the moment a hunt’s master fed live fox cubs to his dogs... The court heard how an animal rights investigator, Karl Garside, captured the incident after placing a magnetic tracker on Parry’s Land Rover.  He said the cameras were installed near white trailers on site of SHH Kennels, where he also found a fox cub in a cage. more

KY - A former Murray High School teacher and coach accused of placing a video recorder in a bathroom was in court on Thursday...staff reported finding a recording device set up in the bathroom of the nurse's station. Police say the recorder captured Boggess putting the device in place. (Darwin Award!) more

LA - A Livingston Parish man has been arrested on his second offense of video voyeurism. more

SC - During the search, investigators found more than 40,000 files of child pornography and hidden cameras in his bedroom and bathroom that he used to film adults and children for nearly 14 years since 2003. more

CA - A former Canadian Armed Forces member who allegedly hid cameras in bathrooms and bedrooms in various locations in Canada and the United states is still awaiting a verdict from the military court in CFB Esquimalt...A police search of his home in Virginia recovered several pinhole spy cameras, a digital clock with a camera hidden in it, three smoke alarms with cameras hidden in it, as well as audio recording devices, external hard drives, and a laptop. more 

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Summer Travel - Passport Safety Tips

There is more to protecting it than you think...

by Kevin Coffey, Travel Safety Expert
Your passport is your key to proving citizenship and is the document that the US and other countries use to recognize you and to let you enter the country, therefore you must safeguard this critical document.

Anyone traveling abroad, especially for the first time, should take a few minutes to read up on important passport security tips. more