Oil & Gas Industry Corporate Espionage, or Those Fracking Spies

According to the FBI, corporate espionage in the global oil and gas industry mostly involves stealing intellectual property, including a company's trade secrets, research, and proprietary information...

The main culprits are domestic and/or foreign commercial rivals, start-up companies, foreign Intelligence officers (spies), disgruntled employees (insider threat), or organized criminals.

In the case of Texas fracking companies, employees of drilling firms were targeted when they traveled outside the United States with the contents of their company laptops stolen.

Alternatively, individuals were actively placed inside target companies, or disgruntled employees would simply go rogue and begin collecting and selling trade secrets, mainly as an act of defiance to strike back at their employers. more

Government-Mandated Tax Software Contains Malware

U.S. and German investigative and intelligence agencies issued grave warnings in recent months that Chinese government-mandated tax software contains malware, which enables backdoor access into the applications that install it.

If the allegations are true, local units of foreign companies operating in China as well as global financial institutions will be exposed to the risk. more

Diplomats Reportedly Zapped with Microwaves

Mysterious neurological symptoms experienced by U.S. diplomats in China and Cuba appear to be caused by directed microwave energy, according to a new report by the National Academies of Sciences (NAS) obtained by The Hill...

A source familiar with the symptoms told NBC News, which was the first to report on the findings from NAS, that the CIA had determined Russian operatives who had worked on microwave weapons were in the same cities as CIA agents at the time they began experiencing the neurological symptoms.

U.S. diplomats in Cuba began experiencing the symptoms in late 2016, reporting they were hearing strange sounds and experiencing odd physical sensations before becoming sick. Some of those symptoms disappeared, while others lingered.

Cuba has denied any knowledge of the illnesses. more

School District Sweeps Schools for Recording Devices ... Using Maintenance & IT Staff

Canada - Anglophone East School District sweeps Riverview schools for recording devices. 

Sweep done after a volunteer basketball coach was charged with 30 child pornography and voyeurism charges. 

Anglophone East Superintendent Gregg Ingeroll sent an e-mail to parents... He says the sweep was done by maintenance and IT staff in all Riverview schools, searching for any electronic or recording devices, as well as any areas where recording devices could potentially be hidden.  

"This sweep of all areas resulted in no recording devices being found," Ingersoll wrote.

No surprise there. This amateur hour bug sweep was an exercise in negligence, or a whitewash. 

Consider these points...

• There is evidence of a crime.
• There is a suspect.
• An independent Technical Surveillance Countermeasures (TSCM) specialist is not called in to investigate.
• A decision is made to use in-house janitors and the IT guy. Persons with no TSCM training or the required detection instrumentation. And, most importantly, no independent objectivity, and possibly a personal relationship with the suspect.

This Month in Spycam News

FL - A nurse in Florida has been charged with video voyeurism after being accused of planting a hidden camera in a public restroom at the rehab clinic where he worked. more

Canada - The man who recorded people changing and using a staff bathroom at Summerhill Winery was a “raging alcoholic” at the time, according to his lawyer... Leighton's defence counsel Cory Armour said his client had been drinking a 26-ounce bottle of hard liquor and two bottles of wine every day in August 2019, when he hid cameras inside the staff washroom at Summerhill Winery. He was an employee of the winery at the time. more

 FL - A man is facing video voyeurism charges while claiming to be on a job interview. The Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office arrested Che Cunningham, 27, on the third floor of an unidentified office building... According to the arrest report, Cunningham said he came to the building for a job interview but didn't remember the employer's name or office number. He claimed he had to use the bathroom and accidentally walked into the women's restroom. more

FL - A Village of Chitty Chatty man has entered a plea in a criminal case in which he is accused of using his phone to shoot video of a man in an adjacent bathroom stall. Sumter County sheriff’s deputies had been searching for a man who had gone to Lowe’s Home Improvement ... and attempted to use his phone to video a man using an adjacent stall in a restroom. more

IN - A Jay County man has been charged with voyeurism after failing to convince authorities his actions had been part of an ill-conceived Halloween prank. Sheriff's deputies said Doublin was visiting the home of a female acquaintance when he tried to use his cellphone to record images of the woman's daughter as she entered and emerged from a shower. The young woman had suspected Doublin of such behavior earlier, and placed a camera in a hallway to record his actions on Oct. 31, according to an affidavit. more

Australia - A woman has shared the sneaky way a man was trying to record her getting undressed in a changing room in a bid to help others stay safe... (The) video shows, the man in the stall next to hers had used this gap to try to record her getting undressed, positioning his camera phone between his feet on the floor to point inside her cubicle and film her getting undressed. more

MS - A Mississippi man has been arrested after police reportedly found a camera he installed in his neighbors bedroom wall. On Friday, Oxford police arrested 44-year-old Gary Morris after officers responded to a residence on Christman Drive where a woman found a camera lens protruding through her bedroom wall. more

Canada - A 37-year-old man faces voyeurism-related charges for allegedly filming an Ottawa woman without her consent during consensual sexual encounters over a two-year period. The Almonte man met the victim on a dating app. more

SC - Agents with SLED have confirmed the arrest of a Laurens County Detention Center officer. Warrants say Tollison on multiple occasions invited a victim into his office to change her clothing in private... During these incidents, Tollison set up a web camera in his office and photographed the victim undressing without her knowledge or consent. more

Borneo - The Magistrate’s Court yesterday handed a four-month jail sentence to a 42-year-old cleaner for recording a video of a woman using the female restroom at a government primary school... The court was also informed that he had been employed for a year as a cleaner at the school. more

Singapore - Earlier this year, Lynn Neo started locking the door of her hostel room whenever she took a nap... She and other friends began taking precautions like these immediately after they heard about a 24-year-old male student at NUS who had mounted two spycams in women’s toilets in their college. more

Learn how to detect spy cameras.

Verizon’s 2020 Cyber Espionage Report

Verizon’s 2020 Cyber Espionage Report, the result of a total of 14 years of research into global data breaches and threat actor activity, has come up with some illuminating observations about long-term patterns of cyber spying. 

Among the major highlights are that criminal organizations and disgruntled former employees play a trivial role in overall attempts, that the public sector is the preferred target of attackers and that desktops and laptops are far more likely to be breached than phones...

Though there is some market for corporate secrets in the criminal underworld, the research shows that these figures make up a small amount of overall cyber espionage incidents: about 4% are from organized crime, and about 2% are from former employees. An overwhelming 85% come from state-affiliated groups, with an additional 8% from nation-states. more

Work From Home (WFH) Risks Assessed

The work-from-home (WFH) arrangement appeared to be the safest way for employees and businesses to continue operating during the pandemic, but it also exposes companies to heightened cyber security risks, studies showed...

There is also a perception that getting home security controls or measures or support from their companies is getting expensive...

The study showed that 43 percent of breach victims were small businesses, and 34 percent of data breached involved internal actors. The same survey showed that 15 percent of companies found millions of files open to every employee. ...The study showed that 71 percent of breaches were financially motivated and 25 percent is due to espionage. more

Concerned about Sony's PS5 spying on you? Here is What You Can Do...

Sony's always-on PS5 DualSense mics are sparking privacy concerns. The PlayStation 5's DualSense controller comes with a built-in mic that's on by default, and it records what you say to help Sony "analyze" key data points. Here's how to change those settings, and what they mean.

Gamers are a bit concerned about privacy on the PS5. 

It was recently confirmed the DualSense's mic auto-records anything you say when unlocking an in-game trophy. This is just the tip of the iceberg, really.

As a PS5 owner you can limit the data that Sony collects. But you can't turn data collection off entirely.

Here's how to adjust your data collection settings:
Settings -> Users and Accounts -> Privacy -> Data You Provide more

GPS Trackers, Hidden Cameras on the Rise During Pandemic

Domestic violence offenders are increasingly using GPS trackers and surveillance cameras to monitor their victims, with support workers saying technology-based abuse has escalated during the pandemic... 

The report, co-authored by researchers from WESNET, Curtin University and the University of New England, surveyed 442 support workers from around the country who specialise in helping victims of family and sexual violence...

In 2020, nearly one in three frontline workers said they saw victims tracked with GPS apps or devices "all the time". Five years ago, only 8 per cent of workers saw that type of abuse that often.

Surveillance camera misuse was seen "all the time" or "often" by 42 per cent of support workers in 2020, up from 16 per cent in 2015. more

Learn how to detect covert cameras.

Spy News of the Week

NZ - A soldier based in New Zealand has been charged with spying, the NZ Defense Force confirmed in a statement Wednesday. Why it matters: The soldier allegedly has ties to far-right extremist groups, per multiple local media reports. They're the first person to face espionage charges in New Zealand. more

Iran released a British-Australian scholar, Kylie Moore-Gilbert, detained since 2018 on charges of spying for Israel, in a prisoner swap conducted Wednesday for three Iranian men described by Iran’s official media as businessmen who had been held abroad. more

TX - A Texas A&M employee claims in a federal lawsuit against the university that her former boss secretly recorded her and dozens of other women using the bathroom... The camera was located underneath a counter in the women’s bathroom, facing toward the toilet. more

Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde formally urged Iran to cancel an execution for an Iranian-Swedish professor charged with spying for Israel. more 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has promised Jonathan Pollard, an American who spent 30 years in U.S. prison for spying for Israel, a warm welcome and a comfortable life in Israel now that parole restrictions have ended. more

Hackers have the ability to use Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) technology to enable vacuum cleaners to eavesdrop private conversations in houses. A LiDAR sensor is designed to scan the surroundings by utilising laser-based ranging techniques to create a distance map. In robotic vaccum cleaners, these sensors act as navigators and provide mapping services to clean houses. more

MA - Betty Cavacco is calling for a special town counsel to investigate alleged email spying by Town Manager Melissa Arrighi, but no one else on the Select Board is supporting that proposal. Following a lengthy executive session that delayed the start of Tuesday’s meeting, board member Cavacco read a statement urging the appointment of an investigator to review this matter, calling the allegations of spying on emails “a disturbing and scary affront to the foundations of the government of this town.” more

Swiss public television, SRF, has found a second company besides Crypto AG was involved in manufacturing manipulated devices allegedly used for spying by foreign intelligence... Of concern are the OC-500 series devices. Devices were sold to several Swiss federal agencies. However, Swiss authorities only noticed the devices weren't secure in the mid-2000s. more

100 Best Spy Movies of all Time

Stacker compiled data on all spy movies to come up with a Stacker score—a weighted index split evenly between IMDb and Metacritic scores. Here are the best spy movies of all time... more

#5 - Duck Soup

 

Nicolas Sarkozy Eavesdropping Trial Will Resume Monday

France - Nicolas Sarkozy’s trial for corruption in the “wiretapping” affair will be held well by the end of the year. After a false start last Monday, the court requested the resumption of the hearing next Monday, November 30.

The corruption trial of former President Nicolas Sarkozy in the “eavesdropping” affair will resume next Monday, November 30, the Paris Criminal Court having rejected on Thursday November 26 the request for referral, for health reasons, of one of his co-defendants. more

The Case of the "Donated" Apples, or Pad My Palm

Apple Inc.’s head of global security and the Santa Clara County undersheriff are among those charged in an alleged bribery scheme in which iPads worth $70,000 were to be given to the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office in exchange for concealed-carry firearms permits, according to an indictment released Monday...“Undersheriff Sung and Captain Jensen treated CCW licenses as commodities and found willing buyers,” Santa Clara County Dist. Atty. Jeff Rosen said in a statement. “Bribe seekers should be reported to the district attorney’s office, not rewarded with compliance.”

EaaS - Espionage as a Service

Ransomware-as-a-service has become so popular and profitable that bad actors in the dark markets are expanding their range of illicit services to offer dedicated phishing and espionage campaigns too.

Over the past half a year, BlackBerry’s Research and Intelligence team has been keeping a close eye on a cyber-espionage campaign that is targeting individuals around the world. Dubbed ‘CostaRicto’ by BlackBerry, the campaign seems to be run by 'hackers-for-hire', a group of skilled APT actors with bespoke malware tooling and complex VPN proxy and secure shell (SSH) tunneling capabilities...

When it comes to espionage campaigns, outsourcing the whole or even part of the campaign is a compelling proposition, particularly for businesses and individuals who are looking for inside information on their competitors but don’t necessarily have the skills, tools or experience to do this themselves. (and/or want plausible deniability) more

The use of cutouts is a popular and very effective spy tactic. Most corporate espionage (and competitive intelligence) is based on this method. 

Pretext'ers, employment moles, buggers, blackmailers, aerial reconnaissance pilots, private investigators, and bribers are just a few of the EaaS types. Now, hackers join the list. The one thing they have
in common is stay invisible and don't get caught. 

Thus, the victim never realizes they have been victimized. 

Thus, only corporations with smart security directors conduct Technical Surveillance Countermeasures (TSCM) inspections, information security surveys and provide employees with counterespionage training.

In Other News... Laser Device Can Make Lightning Strike Specific Targets

An international team of researchers says that small lasers could be used to guide lightning strikes — much like Thor’s legendary hammer Mjölnir.

“It turns out that to deliver particles, you do not need high-intensity lasers, even low intensity like your laser pointer will be already enough,” Andrey Miroshnichenko, a researcher at the University of New South Wales in Canberra, Australia, told Agence France Presse of the work...

“We can imagine a future where this technology may induce electrical discharge from passing lightning, helping to guide it to safe targets and reduce the risk of catastrophic fires,” co-researcher Vladlen Shvedov from the Australian National University told AFP.

Or you could use it to smite your enemies. Just saying. more