This Week in Spy News

Swedish brothers face trial on Russia spy charges
Two Swedish brothers accused of selling secrets to Russia's intelligence services have gone on trial in what has been called one of Sweden's worst ever alleged cases of espionage. more

Alleged Chinese spy detained in Quebec seeks bail, wants to clear name
A former employee of Quebec's electricity utility who is charged with economic espionage for the benefit of China denied on Thursday that he was a flight risk and said he wanted to stay in Canada to fight the charges. more

US Senators Reportedly Worried About Foreign Espionage As Chinese Drones Fly Over No-Go Zones In DC
Recreational drones made by Da-Jiang Innovations, or DJI, a Chinese technology company, have been reportedly detected in restricted airspace over Washington, D.C. more

Pakistan appoints ex-spy master Gen. Munir as new army chief
Pakistani Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif has named the country's former spy chief as head of the military, the information minister said Thursday, ending months of speculation about the new appointment. more

Fear of espionage: USA bans Huawei products from stores
The US government bans the sale and import of communication devices from Chinese smartphone manufacturers and network suppliers Huawei and ZTE. They posed an unacceptable risk to national security, the US telecommunications regulator FCC said on Friday. more

UK bans Chinese surveillance cameras from 'sensitive' sites
Hikvision, a leading Chinese surveillance company, has denied suggestions that it poses a threat to Britain's national security after the UK government banned the use of its camera systems at "sensitive" sites. more

Travelling Australian espionage exhibition reveals double life of post-WWII spies
The touring exhibition is at the Albury Library Museum, on the New South Wales and Victorian border, where it explores espionage and counter-espionage in Australia, from federation through to the present day. more

Bond-inspired watches pay homage to franchise’s 60 years

Swiss watchmaker Omega has released two 007-inspired timepieces.
Photos courtesy Omega

In honour of six decades of high-tech gadgets, espionage, and ‘shaken, not stirred’ martinis, Swiss watchmaker Omega has crafted two new James Bond-inspired timepieces. more

Autonomous Vehicle Espionage Concerns in Congress

A member of the American House of Representatives has raised concerns about the dangers of AVs, warning that these vehicles represent a treasure trove of data that could be exploited against American citizens—or national interests...

According to an article by Wired, AVs effectively serve as moving cameras with access to emails, messages, phone calls.

...even though AVs can improve mobility for people with disabilities and make roads safer, they also enable larger, more sophisticated foreign espionage against industries, organizations and dissidents in the United States. For the original letter posted by Wired, click here.

Best Opening Line of a Scam Email Ever (off topic)

Dear Friend, 

I am enchanted using this tremendous opportunity to converse with you in this medium of communication....

From, Mr. James Mensa, the accounting manager in the Bank of Africa Ltd., Ghana... offering me "US$4.6million us dollars." I declined the money, however the opening sentence is priceless. I'm stealing that for my own use. ~Kevin

Poor Spycraft: Suspected Spy Had a One-Way Ticket Out of Norway

A man suspected of spying for Russia in Norway had bought a one-way ticket out of the Scandinavian country for the day after he was detained, his lawyer said Thursday.

“He was originally leaving. He had a one-way ticket for Oct. 25,” his lawyer Thomas Hansen told the VG newspaper. He added that his client explained that he had canceled the plane ticket. He did not know where his client intended to travel. more

Repair Worker Accused of Hiding Camera in DC Apartment

D.C. police and prosecutors say 41-year-old Eddy Giron installed a small camera in the bathroom of an apartment in Southwest D.C. near the Waterfront Metro station while he did remodeling work... 

Prosecutors said Giron moved the camera to different locations in the bathroom over the course of three days, including inside a vent and beneath the sink aimed at the toilet...

Detectives are investigating the possibility that there could be other victims. more

Retail Employee Says Company Installed Illegal Audio-Recording Cameras at Work

In the U.S., most surveillance laws are dictated at the state level. While the majority of workplaces allow companies to install video cameras that capture visuals of whatever is going on in the store, including interactions of customers and employees, recording audio of their conversations is strictly prohibited in many states.

One of those states is New York, which has implemented anti-eavesdropping statutes that protect employees' conversations from being recorded while at work.

TikToker Ethan Carlson, who posts under the handle @therealethancarlson, recently uploaded a video about his workplace's audio-enabled cameras, prompting many viewers to urge him to report his employer.

In a now viral clip, Ethan says to the camera, "This is not a f--king drill, my place of work has installed these cameras."

He then points his camera lens and zooms in to show security devices installed up high in his store. more

Recently in Spycam News

WA - School Employee charged with over 137 counts of voyeurism after it was found that he put a video camera in the female bathroom of a high school that he was working in, reportedly doing so since 2013. more

Singapore - A 25-year-old man was sentenced to three years and 24 weeks in jail and five strokes of the cane for video voyeurism. He was previously sentenced to three years in jail and three strokes of the cane in November 2018. more

FL - Twice this week there were reports that women were secretly recorded in spaces they thought they had privacy while undressing... "I've watched this issue get worse, and the legislation has responded by getting tougher," Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg said. more

FL - Condo Association President, Charged with 4 Counts of Video Voyeurism... a cord led to a charger, which had a USB from which a USB cord connected to something in the plant. It was a tiny surveillance video camera. It had been placed there to spy on the bedroom’s occupants. more

• You don't have to be a victim. Learn how to spot spycams in places where you expect privacy.

Police Use New Tool to Track People Without a Warrant

Government agencies and private security companies in the U.S. have found a cost-effective way to engage in warrantless surveillance of individuals, groups and places: a pay-for-access web tool called Fog Reveal.

The tool enables law enforcement officers to see “patterns of life” – where and when people work and live, with whom they associate and what places they visit. The tool’s maker, Fog Data Science, claims to have billions of data points from over 250 million U.S. mobile devices. more

Espionage Claim in Airbus Court Fight

Airbus has faced claims that it is using a court battle with an airline to obtain “super sensitive” commercial secrets about Boeing, its main rival.

In the latest twist to the dispute between Qatar Airways and Airbus, the world’s second largest aircraft manufacturer, a judge heard allegations that amounted to corporate espionage.

The Gulf airline is bringing a £1.3 billion claim against Airbus over allegations that problems with cracking paint rendered the A350 passenger aircraft unsafe. more

Zillow Sued For Alleged Wiretapping - It’s not what you think...

If your company maintains a website – whether offering financial products or just selling pet stairs – you now need to be familiar with state and federal wiretapping laws.

The term “wiretapping” probably brings to mind images of police detectives or FBI agents huddled in the back of a white panel van or in a dark room with headphones on, listening to and recording conversations among shady characters.

What likely doesn’t come to mind are interactive business websites. 

Yet a spate of recent class action lawsuits against a variety of business websites – including cases filed separately in September in Pennsylvania, Washington, and Missouri against Zillow Group Inc., as well as those filed against hardware retailer Lowe’s and travel website Expedia, among others – all cite state wiretapping laws as the basis of their complaints about invading consumer privacy...

Privacy experts say all of these wiretapping lawsuits have far reaching implications for any business that maintains a website and uses coding, software, or third-party vendors to analyze what clients or consumers do when they visit online. more

Sensors Tap Into Mobile Vibrations to Eavesdrop Remotely

Using an off-the-shelf automotive radar sensor and a novel processing approach, Penn State researchers demonstrated they could detect the vibrations of a cell phone's earpiece and decipher what the person on the other side of the call was saying with up to 83% accuracy...

The radar operates in the millimeter-wave (mmWave) spectrum, specifically in the bands of 60 to 64 gigahertz and 77 to 81 gigahertz, which inspired the researchers to name their approach "mmSpy." This is a subset of the radio spectrum used for 5G, the fifth-generation standard for communication systems across the globe.

In the mmSpy demonstration, the researchers simulated people speaking through the earpiece of a smartphone. The brand is irrelevant, Basak said, but the researchers tested their approach on both a Google Pixel 4a and a Samsung Galaxy S20. The phone's earpiece vibrates from the speech, and that vibration permeates across the body of the phone.

"We use the radar to sense this vibration and reconstruct what was said by the person on the other side of the line," Basak said, noting that their approach works even when the audio is completely inaudible to both humans and microphones nearby. more

This paper presents a system mmSpy that shows the feasibility of eavesdropping phone calls remotely. Towards this end, mmSpy performs sensing of earpiece vibrations using an off-the-shelf radar device that operates in the mmWave spectrum (77GHz, and 60GHz). abstract

FM Bug Kits from China - $0.70

 Just when you thought electronic surveillance couldn't get more affordable... more

SPECIAL EDITION: U.S. Bugging Operation Against Soviets

by Zach Dorfman

Recently, I obtained a set of declassified 1980s intelligence files from Poland’s cold war-era archives. The files detailed a Soviet operation to identify and remove a cornucopia of bugs placed in Russian diplomatic facilities across the United States. 

The document — written in Russian and almost certainly produced by the KGB, unlike the other Polish-language files in the tranche of documents — provides a meticulous pictorial account of the ways in which the U.S. spy services sought to technically surveil the Russians on American soil. The file offers an unprecedented, stunning — if dated — look at these efforts to eavesdrop on Russian government activities within the U.S.

Click to enlarge.

The file details a number of bugs found at Soviet diplomatic facilities in Washington, D.C., New York, and San Francisco, as well as in a Russian government-owned vacation compound, apartments used by Russia personnel, and even Russian diplomats’ cars. 

And the bugs were everywhere: 

• encased in plaster in an apartment closet; 
• behind electrical and television outlets; 
• bored into concrete bricks and threaded into window frames; 
• inside wooden beams and baseboards;
• stashed within a building’s foundation itself; 
• surreptitiously attached to security cameras; 
• wired into ceiling panels and walls; 
• and secretly implanted into the backseat of cars and in their window panels, instrument panels, and dashboards. 

It’s an impressive — and impressively thorough — effort by U.S. counterspies... 

Click to enlarge.

“The number of bugs is useful as an indication that this is a sustained operation over years,” a former U.K. intelligence official with experience conducting technical operations told me. (The official requested anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence techniques.) The sheer variety in where U.S. counterspies placed the bugs shows a great deal of “creativity” on their part, the former U.K. official said. While the bugging of cars and power outlets is considered “fairly standard,” the former official added, U.S. spies cleverly inserted bugs in more unusual locations like window frames...

It's unknown why the Soviets declined to publicize all the bugs they found within their U.S.-based facilities. The Russians ripped them out from their hiding spots, ostensibly preventing them from feeding the U.S. disinformation through the listening devices and trackers they identified.

Click to enlarge.

The likelier explanation is that the KGB knew that U.S. diplomatic facilities in the Soviet Union were bugged to hell — including, at certain points, with listening devices activated by blasting American facilities with microwaves. The use of this technique by the Soviets, which some U.S. officials believed sickened those exposed to it, became a serious diplomatic issue in the 1970s between the two superpowers. more

(Kevin) A friend of mine, now deceased, was one of the CIA technical specialists during this time period who developed and planted these devices. He was prohibited from discussing the actual devices and placement operations even after he retired. However, he did write a "fictitious" story which details a typical bugging operation. Corporate security directors especially should read... The Attack on Axnan Headquarters: An Espionage Operation

Office Bugging Leak Inquiry—Given 7 Days to Submit Report

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif had ordered the formation of a committee to investigate the leaking of several audio files and a review of cybersecurity at the prime minister’s office (PMO). Formally starting today, the committee will probe the public release of audio clips that took place in the PM office. 

PM Office leak inquiry committee is chaired by Rana Sanaullah, Interior Minister, the main agenda behind it is to inquire how this bugging was done and how cyber security was compromised from such a sensitive office...

Debugging practices (TSCM) are done in government offices but authorities doubt that some advanced mobile phone applications were used. For this, the formal body is going to engage intel agencies and technical experts. more

New "RatMilad" Android Malware—Steals Data and Spies on Victims

"RatMilad", a new type of Android malware, is now being used within the Middle East to spy on victims via their smartphones and steal data. RatMilad is a kind of spyware, which are malware programs used to spy on victims through their devices. RatMilad is capable of recording both video and audio, giving the attackers the ability to listen in on private conversations and conduct remote surveillance.

On top of this, RatMilad allows malicious actors to change application permissions on victims' devices.

RatMilad is infecting devices via a phony VPN and number spoofing apps Text Me and NumRent. These apps are being spread through links on social media, meaning almost anyone could be exposed to RatMilad. Once the phony app is installed onto the device, RatMilad can start stealing data and spying on victims. It is being used in this campaign by an Iranian hacker group known as AppMilad. more