History: How to Build a Bugging Device in 1917

Want to build a bug; known as a Detectograph back in 1917? 

Just write to a magazine, like The Electrical Experimenter, and they would tell you. Things were pretty simple back then, but the parts were not cheap. The average full-time worker's wage was $13.21 per week.

Security Camera Catch: Checking Her Mate... with poison

A chess player has been suspended by the Russian Chess Federation and is reportedly facing time in jail after she allegedly tried to poison her rival at the chessboard during a tournament.

Amina Abakarova, a 40-year-old chess coach from Makhachkala in the Russian Republic of Dagestan, is accused of trying to poison her rival, 30-year-old Umayganat Osmanova...

Security camera footage shows the incident where Abakarova calmly walked over to the board where Osmanova was supposed to appear 20 minutes later. It was reported that she'd previously asked if cameras were in operation and been told that they weren't. She then smeared what is said to be potentially deadly mercury from a thermometer. more

How to Fight a Corporate Espionage Accusation

via SPODEK LAW
What Constitutes Corporate Espionage Fraud?
Corporate espionage fraud involves illegally obtaining confidential business information from a competitor to gain an unfair advantage. This can include:

• Stealing trade secrets or proprietary technology
• Hacking into computer systems to access sensitive data
• Using deception to obtain confidential documents
• Bribing or blackmailing employees to reveal inside information
• Industrial sabotage to damage a competitor’s operations

Common Defenses Against Corporate Espionage Charges
1. Lack of Intent
2. Information Was Not Actually a Trade Secret
4. Public Availability
5. Whistleblower Protections
6. Statute of Limitations

Key Legal Precedents in Corporate Espionage Cases

• United States v. Hsu (1999): Established that attempted corporate espionage is prosecutable, even if no actual trade secrets were obtained.
• United States v. Chung (2011): Clarified that the government must prove the defendant knew the information was a trade secret, not just confidential.
• United States v. Aleynikov (2012): Found that software source code did not qualify as a trade secret under the Economic Espionage Act (later overturned).
• United States v. Nosal (2016): Ruled that the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act applies to theft of trade secrets by former employees.

Strategies for Defending Against Corporate Espionage Charges

• 
  Challenging the evidence: 
• Scrutinize how the evidence against you was obtained and push to suppress any improperly gathered information.
• Negotiating with prosecutors
• Presenting alternative explanations:
• Demonstrating lack of economic benefit
• Highlighting inadequate security measures
• Leveraging expert witnesses
• Pursuing civil resolutions

Greater detail appears in the original article, here.

Russian Spy Parents Reveal Identity to Their Children

How would you react if you found out your parents were foreign spies from a country where you couldn’t even speak the language? 

The prisoner exchange that secured the freedom of journalists Evan Gershkovich and Alsu Kurmasheva, as well former Marine Paul Whelan and more than a dozen others from Russian captivity also generated one mind-boggling anecdote seemingly straight out of a Soviet-era spy novel.

Among those swapped were Anna Dultseva and Artyom Dultsev, Russian spies who had been posing as an Argentinian couple in Slovenia. Not even their school-age children, who spoke Spanish with their parents, knew their true origins — until the parents revealed their identities after their release on the plane to Russia. more

How to Boost an Auction - Mention the Word Spy

The holder of Jeffrey Epstein's "little black book" believes it could hold the answer to suspicions that the late sex offender was a foreign spy. 

Eager for the cryptic scribbles and numbers to be investigated, the anonymous owner is putting the book up for online public auction on Aug. 16, with the goal of selling it to somebody capable of tracking down those named in it. more

Doc Boners: Recording Patients with Hidden Cameras

CA - An email sent to patients of a California chiropractic clinic informed them that a hidden camera was found inside an office bathroom and a chiropractor was arrested, according to a new lawsuit.

Dr. Nicholas Vanderhyde, 40, who was arrested in June, is accused of “strategically” hiding the camera in a cabinet to record patients, including children, and their families undressing at The Joint Chiropractic’s office in Valencia, a lawsuit filed in California Superior Court in Los Angeles County says...

According to the complaint, The Joint Chiropractic knew Vanderhyde was a sexual “predator” before another employee discovered the camera, equipped with a battery pack, inside a cabinet. more

Doc Boner II: MA - The owner of a Peabody chiropractic business is facing charges that he recorded nude visitors in his clinic after a hidden spy camera was found in a bathroom last week. more

Doc Boner III: NJ - Chiropractor charged after hidden camera found in bathroom at Springfield, NJ office. more

In other recent spy cam news...

Swim coach accused of hiding camera in changing room and recording teens.

Target shopper sees man record her in dressing room, then starts chasing him.

Girls were secretly recorded at Forever 21 and Six Flags by married couple.

Hidden camera filming through hole in trash can found in hospital bathroom.

FutureWatch: Eavesdropping on YOU, by Looking at Your Face

A Stanford University psychologist named Michal Kosinski claims that AI he's built can detect your intelligence, sexual preferences, and political leanings with a great degree of accuracy just by scanning your face, Business Insider reports.

Though Kosinski says his research should be seen as a warning, his work can feel more like a Pandora Box. Many of the use cases for his research seems pretty bad (like AI security scanners and robcops), and simply publishing about them may inspire new tools for discrimination. (Oops, forget what I just said.)

There's also the issue that the models aren't 100 percent accurate (yet), which could lead to people getting wrongly targeted. (e.g. Being a treehugger is not a sexual preference.) more

Clickbait of the Week: How to Build a (Code Cracking) Photonic Quantum Computer

Spoiler Alerts: 

• No. This is not an https://www.instructables.com/ article. 
• Yes, the title is a lie.

via Photonics Spectra: 

How to Build a Photonic Quantum Computer

Expectations for quantum computers are high: They are supposed to outperform digital computers and pave the way for solutions that go far beyond the capabilities that artificial intelligence already delivers. 

They are predicted to crack unbreakable codes, find new materials for superconductors, and help develop medicine for the next pandemic. 

These are only some of the envisioned outcomes. more

Greenbrier Hotel Up for Public Auction

The Greenbrier Hotel, owned by Gov. Jim Justice and his family, has been announced for auction on the courthouse steps late this month because of default, according to a legal advertisement placed in Lewisburg’s West Virginia Daily News. more

So, why is this news?

One of the great vestiges of the Cold War is the Greenbrier bunker, a facility built to house all 535 members of Congress in the event of a nuclear attack.

In 1955, Dwight D. Eisenhower instructed the Department of Defense to draft emergency plans for Congress in case of a nuclear strike. Even if Washington, DC was destroyed, American officials needed a procedure to maintain the continuity of government. As part of these efforts, the Army Corps of Engineers was charged with scouting the location of a nuclear bunker for the members of Congress. They ultimately selected the Greenbrier, a luxury resort in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia.

Greenbrier was chosen because of its location—relatively close and accessible to Washington, but far enough away to be safe from an atomic bomb—and because of its prior relationship with the United States government. During World War II, Greenbrier had served as an internment facility for Japanese, Italian, and German diplomats and then as a military hospital, where Eisenhower himself was at one time a patient. Although it returned to its original function as a hotel after the war, government officials occasionally held conferences at Greenbrier. more 

Video of the bunker.

Time to sing-s-long! or sing-a-long with... a little darker number.

Free TSCM AI Knowledge Wiki

The website, counterespionage.net, provides a comprehensive range of resources related to Technical Surveillance Countermeasures (TSCM), which can be considered as a knowledge wiki for several reasons:

1. Informative Articles: It features detailed articles explaining what TSCM is and its importance in protecting corporate privacy and intellectual property. For example, the article on What Is TSCM? outlines the holistic approach needed for effective TSCM evaluations.

2. Free Resources: The site offers free TSCM security reports, publications, and videos that educate users about various aspects of surveillance and counter-surveillance techniques. You can find these resources in the TSCM Information section.

3. Guides and Tips: It includes practical guides such as the Security Director’s Guide to Discussing TSCM with Management and tips for businesses on counterespionage, which serve as valuable educational tools.

4. Case Studies and Testimonials: The website also shares case studies and client testimonials that provide real-world examples of TSCM applications, enhancing the learning experience for users.

5. FAQs and Expert Insights: The presence of a FAQ section allows users to get quick answers to common questions about TSCM, further contributing to its role as a knowledge base.

Overall, the combination of educational content, practical resources, and expert insights makes this website a valuable TSCM knowledge wiki. more

A $500 Open Source Tool Lets Anyone Hack Computer Chips With Lasers

IN MODERN MICROCHIPS, where some transistors have been shrunk to less than a 10th of the size of a Covid-19 virus, it doesn't take much to mess with the minuscule electrical charges that serve as the 0s and 1s underpinning all computing. 

A few photons from a stray beam of light can be enough to knock those electrons out of place and glitch a computer's programming. Or that same optical glitching can be achieved more purposefully—say, with a very precisely targeted and well timed blast from a laser. Now that physics-bending feat of computer exploitation is about to become available to far more hardware hackers than ever before.

At the Black Hat cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas next week, Sam Beaumont and Larry “Patch” Trowell, both hackers at the security firm NetSPI, plan to present a new laser hacking device they're calling the RayV Lite. 

Their tool, whose design and component list they plan to release open source, aims to let anyone achieve arcane laser-based tricks to reverse engineer chips, trigger their vulnerabilities, and expose their secrets—methods that have historically only been available to researchers inside of well-funded companies, academic labs, and government agencies. more

This Week in Spy News

• Canada women advance in Olympic soccer as emails show their coach supported spying. more

• Like a spy thriller: Amazing details about assassination of Hamas leader Haniyeh in Tehran start to emerge. more

• Moldova expels Russian diplomat and calls in envoy amid spy case. more

• Suspected Russian spy locked up in Brooklyn freed in prisoner swap for Evan Gershovich, Paul Whelan more

• Chinese Woman, 20, Reports Parents To Police After They Install Spy Camera In Her Bedroom more

• Slovenian court convicts two Russians of espionage more

• French citizen accused of espionage in Russia denied bail. more

• The Philippine National Police is looking into the possibility that gadgets seized from a Chinese national were being used for scamming and espionage activities. more  Security Scrapbook Analysis: The equipment appears to have been obtained from pitsms.top, a Chinese manufacturer of a cellular "Fake Base Station" systems. This could be either a cyber-crime story, or a spy story, depending upon the intended use. Stay tuned. We will update you as this develops. You can watch the Fake Base Station being made, here.

Behind the Prisoner Swap: Spies, a Killer, Secret Messages and Unseen Diplomacy

A turning point came on June 25, when a group of C.I.A. officers sat across from their Russian counterparts during a secret meeting in a Middle Eastern capital.

The Americans floated a proposal: an exchange of two dozen prisoners sitting in jails in Russia, the United States and scattered across Europe, a far bigger and more complex deal than either side had previously contemplated but one that would give both Moscow and Western nations more reasons to say yes...

The Russian spies took the proposal back to Moscow, and only days later the C.I.A. director was on the phone with a Russian spy chief agreeing to the broad parameters of a massive prisoner swap. On Thursday, seven different planes touched down in Ankara, Turkey, and exchanged passengers, bringing to a successful close an intensive diplomatic effort that took place almost entirely out of public view. more

Voice Over Wi-Fi Vulnerability Let Attackers Eavesdrop Calls And SMS

IPsec tunnels are employed by Voice over Wi-Fi (VoWiFi) technology to route IP-based telephony from mobile network operators’ core networks via the Evolved Packet Data Gateway (ePDG).

This process consists of two main phases: negotiation of encryption parameters and performing a key exchange using the Internet Key Exchange protocol, followed by authentication....

The risk is that these vulnerabilities could expose VoWiFi communications to MITM attacks, compromising data integrity or confidentiality, which is essential for better security in implementing VoWiFi solutions...

These findings highlight the systemic flaws in the implementation of VoWiFi, which could make users vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks, and communication security is compromised on a global scale, consequently requiring better security measures in VoWiFi protocols and implementations. more

$2 billion Corporate Espionage Verdict Overturned by Appeals Court

Software company Pegasystems convinced a Virginia appeals court on Tuesday to throw out a $2 billion jury verdict for rival Appian in a court battle over Pegasystems’ alleged theft of Appian’s trade secrets.

The award from 2022 had been the largest damages verdict in Virginia court history, the Court of Appeals of Virginia said in the decision...

McLean, Virginia-based Appian had said in a 2020 lawsuit that Pegasystems hired a contractor to steal confidential information from Appian’s software platform in order to improve its own products and better train its sales force...

Appian said that Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Pegasystems referred internally to the contractor as a spy and to its scheme as “Project Crush,” with Pegasystems employees using fake credentials to access Appian’s software. Pegasystems characterized “Project Crush” as competitive research in a 2022 statement...

Pegasystems’ CEO said in a statement following the verdict that Appian’s CEO “could not identify one trade secret that Pega had allegedly misappropriated” during the trial. more

Moral: Make sure your "trade secrets" meet the requirements of, and can be clearly identified as, Trade Secrets. more