NSA Publishes: Survey of Videoconferencing Apps

Selecting and Safely Using Collaboration Services for Telework
During a global pandemic or other crisis contingency scenarios, many United States Government (USG) personnel must operate from home while continuing to perform critical national functions and support continuity of government services. With limited access to government furnished equipment (GFE) such as laptops and secure smartphones, the use of (not typically approved) commercial collaboration services on personal devices for limited government official use becomes necessary and unavoidable. survey

Agribusiness Espionage: The Scientist and the Spy

Deputy Cass Bollman was about to enjoy a coffee break at a gas station in Iowa when the alert came across his radio: “Asian male wearing a suit walking through a farm field. … Nature of incident: suspicious.”

Bollman raced to the scene, a little northeast of Des Moines, where he talked to a farmer who had spotted the odd figure in the field. A few minutes later, Bollman had pulled over an SUV driven by Robert Mo, a Chinese national.

So begins one of the most unexpected stories of espionage ever told—in this case, by Minnesota journalist Mara Hvistendahl in her new book, “The Scientist and the Spy.”

Wi-Fi Internet Communicator Hidden in a Calculator Hack

Sometimes a device is just too tempting to be left untouched. For [Neutrino], it was an old Casio calculator that happened to have a perfectly sized solar panel to fit a 128×32 OLED as replacement.

But since the display won’t do much on its own, he decided to connect it to an ESP8266 and mount it all inside the calculator’s housing, turning it into a spy-worthy, internet-connected cheating device, including a stealthy user interface controlled by magnets instead of physical buttons. more


It wouldn't take much to turn this into a Wi-Fi bug.

"Recording suspects is his hobby, Your Honor, an innocent hobby."

CA - An Alameda County sheriff's sergeant pleaded no contest this week to four misdemeanor eavesdropping counts for recording conversations between juvenile suspects and their attorneys in 2018.

The plea agreement for Sgt. James Russell, who originally was charged with four felony counts, calls for him to be placed on 3 years'
probation and perform 180 hours of community service...

Odbert (Russsell's attorney) said at the hearing that Russell wasn't present when the recording began and had no intent of using the conversations between Plaine and the juveniles as a way of building a case against them. more

Pew Comments on Relationship Health - It Stinks

Most Americans think snooping on a partner’s phone is a bad thing to do, but that hasn’t stopped more than a third of people in committed relationships from doing it anyway, according to Pew research published Friday.

Of those surveyed, 34 percent of people in committed relationships admitted to snooping on their partner’s phone without their knowledge. Interestingly, the survey also found that 42 percent of women (who are in relationships) say they’ve snooped through their current partners’ phones without them knowing, while just 25 percent of men say they have.

As many of us find ourselves cooped up with our partners and our phones for the foreseeable future, the researchers suggest that using this technology is not necessarily great for the health of our long-term relationships. more

WeChat - More Than Just Chat - You're Teaching it Censorship Skills

The incredibly popular Chinese chat app WeChat is being put under a microscope by The Citizen Lab.

In a study, the researchers found that not only is WeChat spying on the chats of Chinese users, but it’s also looking in on chats from foreigners with the goal of fueling its censorship algorithms...

The company has been known to monitor all of the chats of Chinese users as they come through.

However, the study found that images and documents shared between users outside of China are scanned and flagged for potentially politically sensitive content.

Anything that matches is hashed and flagged when someone shares them with a Chinese account. The flagged content is fed to a machine-learning system that is used to censor content in China. That means WeChat spying isn’t limited to Chinese users, which is quite scary for anyone using the app. more

Spy Satellite NROL-44 Victum of Lockdown... Perhaps

The next flight of United Launch Alliance’s triple-barrel Delta 4-Heavy rocket has been delayed from June to late August, military officials said Friday.

The heavy-lift rocket will carry a classified National Reconnaissance Office payload into orbit ... capable of eavesdropping on foreign communication signals.

Military officials did not disclose a reason for the two-month delay. more

Google Searches for TSCM and Wiretap up in Past Week

This Week in Spycam News

Canada - A judge has certified and approved a class action settlement against a late former Belleville orthodontist, who was alleged to have made video recordings of patients without their consent or knowledge. Dr. Anthony Garry Solomon had been charged with making and possessing child pornography, and voyeurism in 2017, but criminal charges were withdrawn following his death a short time later and a civil class action case has been underway for the past two and a half years. more

LA - More than 10 people who worked in the past for a Plaquemine snowball stand manager accused of videotaping people in the shop's bathroom have contacted the Iberville Parish Sheriff's Office since the manager's arrest on May 2, making a current total of 24 employees who may have been affected, Sheriff Brett Stassi said Friday. more  more

 LA - The Assumption Parish Chamber of Commerce chairman was arrested in St. Gabriel this week after filming a man in public bathroom without consent, authorities said. more

Canada - Multiple charges relating to voyeurism and child pornography have been laid against a Clarington resident who police say formerly worked as a self-employed handyman. more

Namibia - Up to 34 children could be involved in a case in which a Windhoek resident yesterday appeared in cour..."The videos contain various children performing sexual acts in a bathroom where a covert camera was [suspected to have been] set up," Shikwambi said. "Videos were also obtained from a covert camera placed in a toilet at a sporting event inWindhoek recording minor boys visiting the toilet at a municipal swimming pool."

UK - A man has appeared in court accused of killing his wife in an arson attack after spying on her with secret cameras and posting sexually explicit images of her online. more

FL - A Pensacola man is accused of secretly filming women in a Lowe's bathroom, according to a sheriff's report. more

UK - Coronation Street (a TV show) fans were left frustrated last night after the police failed to find Geoff's hidden camera. During the months that Geoff has been abusing Yasmeen, he set up a secret camera to spy on his wife. more

You know spy cameras are a big problem it becomes a popular TV show plot.
Updated: Spy Camera Detectors – Do they work?

Air-Gapped PC Power Supplies Spills the Screens

One of the most secure system arrangements today consists of air-gapped PCs. The reason being their total disconnection from the internet.

In February this year, it was reported that hackers can steal data from air-gapped PC using screen brightness and now the same can be done through their power supply.

Mordechai Guri, a cybersecurity researcher from the Israeli Ben Gurion of the Negev University has conducted an experiment that shows how power supply units (PSUs) can be exploited to extract information from both an air-gapped & audio-gapped computer.

Termed as POWER-SUPPLaY; the malware exploits the PSU using it as an “out-of-band, secondary speaker with limited capabilities”. The data that can be extracted includes different files & information of the user’s keystrokes transmittable up to 1 meters away along with passwords and encryption keys that the attacker could receive with a device that is five meters away from such as a smartphone...

The research does not deal with the question of how the malware will be implemented in the first place. The technique is very clever nonetheless. more

TSCM Nightmares Today, Reality Tomorrow

These give some technical surveillance countermeasures specialists nightmares.

Emerging technologies like the ones below are interesting. They could be used for illegal eavesdropping in the future. Combining the first two could produce a wireless bug that never has to have its batteries replaced. It could also be incredibly small.

Some people say, "the bad guys are always one step ahead of us."
I say, "do your homework and you will be one step ahead of them."

Ultra-Low-Power WiFi Radio Enables IoT Devices

• Housed in a chip, it lets IoT devices communicate with existing WiFi networks.
• Housed in a chip smaller than a grain of rice.
• The radio could last for years on a single coin cell battery.

It consumes just 28 microwatts of power and does so while transmitting data at a rate of 2 megabits per second (a connection fast enough to stream music and most YouTube videos) over a range of up to 21 meters.



New Green Technology from UMass Amherst Generates Electricity ‘Out of Thin Air’

The laboratories of electrical engineer Jun Yao and microbiologist Derek Lovley at UMass Amherst have created a device they call an “Air-gen.” or air-powered generator, with electrically conductive protein nanowires produced by the microbe Geobacter.

The Air-gen connects electrodes to the protein nanowires in such a way that electrical current is generated from the water vapor naturally present in the atmosphere. “We are literally making electricity out of thin air,” says Yao.



Seeing Around Corners to Detect Object Shapes
Special light sources and sensors see around corners or through gauzy filters, enabling reconstruction of the shapes of unseen objects.

A technique was developed that enables reconstruction of images in great detail. Researchers computed millimeter- and micrometer-scale shapes of curved objects, providing an important component to a larger suite of non-line-of-sight (NLOS) imaging techniques.

Most of what people see — and what cameras detect — comes from light that reflects off an object and bounces directly to the eye or the lens. But light also reflects off the objects in other directions, bouncing off walls and objects. 

Trade Secret Protection in a Nutshell

Trade Secret Law in a Nutshell (book)

The federal Defend Trade Secrets Act and similar laws in most states let employers seek injunctions for the return of certain business information if three things are true: 

1. The information is actually secret,  
2. the business has taken "reasonable measures" to keep it so, 
3. and the information has "independent economic value" because it's unknown to others who could profit from it.

These cases often turn on what an employer did to protect its alleged secret. If security was tight, it stands a good chance at getting an injunction; if it was lax, it'll likely lose. more

Spy vs. Spy - The Movie

The Spy vs. Spy comic strip has been a regular fixture in Mad magazine for almost sixty years. In that time, the two identical birdlike espionage agents — Black Spy and White Spy — have also featured in video games and cartoons, but a live-action big-screen adaptation has continually eluded the warring duo. However, that could all finally change, if new developments go according to plan.

According to Collider, Rawson Marshall Thurber is in talks to direct the movie for Warner Bros. and Imagine Entertainment. Ron Howard and Brian Grazer are on board as producers, which makes sense as they’ve been attached to the project since its inception. It remains to be seen if Dwayne Johnson will star, but that wouldn’t be surprising as he’s Thurber’s go-to guy...

The movie, as silly as it will undoubtedly be, might also be very smart and biting. The original comics are rife with political satire, often taking aim at America’s involvement in wars. Given that there’s still plenty of real-life drama to comment on, don’t be surprised if the movie pokes fun at current affairs...

If the film lives up to its potential, Spy vs. Spy will be one entertaining, wacky ride. more

Spycam Detection Course | Now With Korean Closed Captions

The highly rated Spycam Detection video training course now has Korean closed captions, as well as English. Spanish is coming soon.

The demand for a Korean translation was fueled by their epidemic spy camera problem. They even have a special word for it, Molka. The problem is so bad the government created special inspection squads and a safety handbook for the public.

In other countries the problem is also epidemic.

This one-hour, self-paced course was originally created for businesses and other organizations to train their security and facilities employees. Having these people conduct periodic inspections reduces risk and legal exposure. A Certificate-of-Completion is awarded at the end.

The training is also beneficial for police, private investigators and executive protection professionals.

Personal protection is the most effective prevention. Knowing what to look for is important. The course is open to everyone. Any individual with a little knowledge can conduct their own inspections of:

• hotel rooms,
• public restroom,
• store changing rooms,
• locker rooms,
• vacation rentals,
• and their own domiciles.

Please forward this post to anyone it can help.
As more people become knowledgeable, fewer people will become victims.

Eavesdropper Scams Financial Advisor | Prevention Tips

Early in April, a financial advisor and her team met with an insurance company wholesaler via the video conferencing platform Zoom.

Unbeknownst to them, another participant had joined the virtual meeting.

As the hacker captured details, the wholesaler named the price of a new policy and the advisor agreed to the terms.

...It’s likely that even before the meeting ended the eavesdropper generated an email to the advisor so that it appeared to come from the insurer. In a later forensic analysis, an overlooked detail revealed the spoof: a single letter the hacker changed in the insurance company’s name.

After the meeting ended, the advisor received the message with instructions to wire money — in the low six figures — to a New York bank account. She did as instructed, sending the money to the hacker. more

———How to prevent Zoombombing in your video chats in 4 easy steps———

1. Don't use your Personal Meeting ID for the meeting. Instead, use a per-meeting ID, exclusive to a single meeting. Zoom's support page offers a video walk-through on how to generate a random meeting ID for extra security.

2. Enable the "Waiting Room" feature so that you can see who is attempting to join the meeting before allowing them access. Like many other privacy functions, a skillful disrupter can sometimes bypass this control, but it helps to put another hurdle in their route to chaos.

Zoom offers a support article here as well. To enable the Waiting Room feature, go to Account Management > Account Settings. Click on Meeting, then click Waiting Room to enable the setting.

3. Disable other options, including the ability for others to Join Before Host (it should be disabled by default, but check to be sure -- see below). Then disable screen-sharing for nonhosts, and also the remote control function. Finally, disable all file transferring, annotations and the autosave feature for chats...

4. Once the meeting begins and everyone is in, lock the meeting to outsiders ... and assign at least two meeting co-hosts. The co-hosts will be able to help control the situation in case anyone bypasses your efforts and gets into the meeting. more