Protecting Your Engineering Business from Industrial Espionage

Industrial espionage is a much more common occurrence than many people realize. 

As a business grows and begins to compete at a higher level, the stakes grow and their corporate secrets become more valuable. It isn’t just other businesses that might want this information, hackers who think they can sell the information will also be sniffing about.

Even if you can’t eliminate the risk entirely, there are certain things you can do to reduce the risk of a security breach in your business. more

A Very Short List...

• Shred Documents

• Don’t Print Sensitive Information if You Don’t Have to

• Keep Your Schematics (designs, strategies, etc.) Under Wraps

• Keep it Need to Know

and my favorite... 

• Be Proactive - Look for Leaks

Because...
If you don't look,
you may never know.

Workplace Covert Recording on the Rise

Voice activated recorder. Easy to hide.

South Korean workers fed up with bullying are being increasingly emboldened by a new tougher labor law to secretly record alleged abuse or harassment by their bosses, boosting sales of high-tech audio and video devices.

Gadgets disguised as leather belts, eyeglasses, pens and USB sticks are all proving popular with employees in a country where abusive behavior by people in power is so pervasive that there is a word for it - “gabjil”...

Auto Jungbo Co.’s sales of voice recorders so far this year have doubled to 80 devices per day, Jang said as he forecast sales to also double this calendar year to 1.4 billion won. more

Kevin's Tips for Management

• Assume your discussions are being recorded.
• Before proceeding, ask if they are recording.
• Be professional. If you would not say it in a courtroom, don’t say it.
• Red Flag – When an employee tries to recreate a previous conversation with you.
• Have an independent sweep team conduct periodic due diligence debugging inspections.

Create a Workplace Recording Policy

Carrie's on-the-Lam Comment via a Leaked Recording

The embattled leader of Hong Kong was caught on a leaked audio recording reportedly saying she would “quit” if she could after causing “unforgivable havoc,” but on Tuesday reiterated that she hasn’t resigned because it would be the easy way out.

In a press conference, Carrie Lam slammed the audio, recorded during a private meeting with a group of businesspeople, saying it was “unacceptable.”

The recording was published Monday by Reuters. In it, she is heard apparently blaming herself for igniting Hong Kong’s political crisis. more

Kevin's Tips for Management

• Assume your discussions are being recorded.
• Before proceeding, ask if they are recording.
• Be professional. If you would not say it in a courtroom, don’t say it.
• Red Flag – When an employee tries to recreate a previous conversation with you.
• Have an independent sweep team conduct periodic due diligence debugging inspections.

Create a Workplace Recording Policy

A Golf Ball Right Out of Spy vs. Spy

Nissan Motor Co. has developed a golf ball that will help you make a putt with your eyes closed.

As a proof of concept, the carmaker unveiled a video on Tuesday, whereby a toddler taps a ball with his club and makes a putt that would make Tiger Woods’ jaw drop. Here’s how it works... more

The Scarlet Letter: 2019 - Old Spy Tool. New Use.

Ultraviolet ink has been used by spies (secret writing) and TSCM technicians (as tamper detection) for over a century. And now, to brand sexual assailants for groping.

Anti-groping stamp lets victims mark assailants.

The Japanese device is paired with a special lamp that lets its otherwise invisible ink be seen...

The Tokyo Metropolitan Police said 2,620 sexual crimes were reported in 2017, including 1,750 cases of groping, mostly on trains or at stations.

A limited run of 500 devices, which retailed at 2,500 yen (£19.30), sold out within 30 minutes on Tuesday... more

FutureWatch: Additional tech will continue to enhance citizen crime fighting. New technologies will be appropriated. Old technologies, like ultraviolet, will find new uses. 

Just think of what internet search engines, smartphone videos, video doorbells, and covert spy cameras have already accomplished in recent decades. 

I wonder why Gentian Violet in mini spray bottles wasn't thought of first. Instant ID. No UV light necessary.

Has Your Doctor (or other Professional) Downloaded Apps With Microphone Access?

via Robinson & Cole LLP - Linn Foster Freedman

As I always do when talking to people about their phones, I asked them to go into their privacy settings and into the microphone section and see how many apps they have downloaded that asked permission to access the microphone. How many green dots are there? Almost all of them looked up at me with wide eyes and their lips formed a big “O.”...

I am not picking on them—I do the same thing with lawyers, financial advisors and CPAs, and any other professional that has access to sensitive information.

When a professional downloads an app that allows access to the microphone, all of the conversations that you believe are private and confidential are now not private and confidential if that phone is in the room with you. more

Just Another Week in the World of Spies

China - Yang Hengjun, a well-known Australian writer and democracy activist detained by the Chinese authorities in January, has been formally charged with spying... more

Russia - A Moscow court has ruled to keep an American man and Marine veteran suspected of spying in prison for two more months. The court ruled on Friday to keep Paul Whelan behind bars at least until late October. more 

WWW - Freelance site Fiverr offers illegal private spying services... more

UAE - Why the CIA doesn't spy on the UAE... more

Israel shouldn’t let a little spying undo its economic ties with China, ex-chief analyst argues... more

Iran has sentenced a British-Iranian national to 10 years in jail for spying for Israel... more

China’s spies are waging an intensifying espionage offensive against the United States. more

USA - Patrick Byrne resigned suddenly as CEO of Overstock.com last Thursday, after mounting controversy surrounding his past romantic relationship with alleged Russian agent Maria Butina. Butina is now serving an 18 month prison sentence for conspiring to promote Russian interests through conservative U.S. political groups. more

Australia - Intelligence agencies warn of 'unprecedented scale' of foreign spying within Australia. more

Iran - Environmentalists filming Iran’s endangered cheetahs could be executed for spying. more

India sending spying devices to Pakistan via balloons... more

USA - The spy in your wallet: Credit cards have a privacy problem... In a privacy experiment, we bought one banana with the new Apple Card — and another with the Amazon Prime Rewards Visa from Chase. Here’s who tracked, mined and shared our data. more

Book - The Secret World: A History of Intelligence

via By Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker
The history of espionage is a lesson in paradox: the better your intelligence, the dumber your conduct; the more you know, the less you anticipate.

Is intelligence intelligent? This is the question that runs or, rather, leaps through the mind of the reader struggling with Christopher Andrew’s encyclopedic work “The Secret World: A History of Intelligence” (Yale).

Andrew, who is a longtime history don at Cambridge, begins his book...with one of the most appealing opening lines in recent nonfiction: “The first major figure in world literature to emphasize the importance of good intelligence was God.”

The Israelites’ reconnaissance mission to the promised land of Canaan is the first stop in Andrew’s tour of four thousand years of spying; the last is the American failure to anticipate 9/11.

For anyone with a taste for wide-ranging and shrewdly gossipy history—or, for that matter, for anyone with a taste for spy stories—Andrew’s is one of the most entertaining books of the past few years. more

'Complete Control' Hack Allows Audio / Video Spying and More

All Windows users should update immediately as ‘Complete Control’ hack is confirmed.

In case you were underestimating the tool, it can allow a hacker to remoting shutdown or reboot the system, remotely browse files, access and control the Task Manager, Registry Editor, and even the mouse.

Not only that, but the attacker can also open web pages, disable the webcam activity light to spy on the victim unnoticed and capture audio and video.

Since the attacker has full access to the computer, they can also recover passwords and obtain login credentials using a keylogger as well as lock the computer with custom encryption that can act like ransomware. more

Whistle-Blower Charged with Industrial Espionage, or No Good Deed Goes...

A whistle-blower responsible for uncovering one of the biggest cases of tax avoidance in Germany is now prosecuted by Swiss authorities for industrial espionage...

Echart Seith is a lawyer that contributed to uncovering a Swiss bank mechanism that deprived German taxpayer of €12bn...

The 61-year old Seith has now been charged with industrial espionage and his case goes to trial on March 26. If found guilty, he is facing three-and-a-half years in prison. His testimony closed the tax loophole exploited by the Swiss banking industry in 2011...

The question at hand is how Seith got internal bank documents that allowed him to make the case against the Swiss banking system. more

How Music Has Made Auditory Surveillance Possible

An interesting article on the history of electronic eavesdropping...
For as long as we’ve been able to transmit sound through the ether, it seems, someone has been listening in... more

FutureWatch: Eavesdropping on REALLY Tiny Sounds

Researchers have developed a microphone so sensitive it’s capable of picking up individual particles of sound.

OK, we knew light has particles, and gravity has particles. Now even sound has particles? Well, not quite. A phonon is what’s called a quasiparticle — basically, an emergent phenomenon that occurs when a microscopically complicated system behaves as if it were a particle...

 The quantum microphone consists of a series of supercooled nanomechanical resonators, so small that they are visible only through an electron microscope.

The resonators are connected to a superconducting circuit which contains electron pairs that move around without resistance. The circuit forms a qubit — a system that can exist in two states at once and has a natural frequency, which can be read electronically. more

Spycam Man Gets Life +150 Years — Skips on Castration

A workman accused of hiding cameras in several homes to spy on young girls was sentenced Wednesday to life in prison plus nearly 150 years by a judge who said she would have him castrated if the law allowed.

"We're here because of the choices that you and you alone made," Oklahoma County District Judge Amy Palumbo told Ryan Aaron Alden. "The devastation that you caused these families may never be known."

Alden, 39, of The Village, pleaded guilty in June to 28 felonies that included aggravated possession of obscene material involving minors, manufacturing child pornography and using video equipment in a clandestine manner.

Prosecutors alleged that Alden placed hidden cameras in the ceiling vents of four homes in Edmond, Nichols Hills and Oklahoma City. He reportedly placed the cameras in the bedrooms, bathrooms and closets of the homes while performing electrical work.

Alden was also accused of taking clandestine photos of girls in numerous public places, including gyms, schools, stores, mall changing rooms and a high school football game. more

Fighting Corporate Espionage — by a Counterintelligence Agent

Corporate executives must bear the responsibility... No longer is “Security” to the facility and personnel all that is required. Many foreign countries and interests take short cuts to becoming competitive through the theft of trade secrets, products and overt and covert espionage of all sorts...

Many of the tactics utilized in private sector counterintelligence have much in common with the secrets and information the government does its best to safeguard from theft... 

 There are open and legal methods of collection open that are harmful and a good counterintelligence program should target this as well as illegal activities such as electronic eavesdropping, hacking, etc.

Passive counterintelligence tries to curtail what a collector may do through countermeasures, and awareness training. Active counterintelligence will prove beneficial to identify and detect a threat, and will conduct operations including eliminating threats or ongoing targeting... The leaders in the private sector need to be proactive and realize that it is no longer only local threats they face. The threats can be global and may not only be an economic threat but also a threat to national security. more

The O.MG Cable™ — The Smartphone Electro-Leach

via Blue Blaze irregular C.G.

The O.MG Cable™ is the result of months of work that has resulted in a highly covert malicious USB cable. As soon as the cable is plugged in, it can be controlled through the wireless network interface that lives inside the cable.

 

The O.MG Cable allows new payloads to be created, saved, and transmitted entirely remotely. 

 

The cable is built with Red Teams in mind with features like additional boot payloads, no USB enumeration until payload execution, and the ability to forensically erase the firmware, which causes the cable to fall entirely back to an innocuous state. And these are just the features that have been revealed so far. more 

 

Their other "interesting" products of which you should be aware.