Cautionary Tale for Traveling Executives - A Case of Spy Tradecraft...

A Bulgarian espionage ring working on behalf of Russia in the UK used video-recording spyglasses and honey traps to gather information on journalists and dissidents...

...five Bulgarian nationals who are accused of spying in Britain as part of a ring co-ordinated by Jan Marsalek, the former chief operating officer of Wirecard. 

London’s Old Bailey heard the group targeted journalists Christo Grozev and Roman Dobrokhotov, as well as Kazakh dissident Bergey Ryskaliyev, tracking them variously on flights and across European cities during 2021 and 2022. 

One member of the group, Katrin Ivanova, 33, used specially-designed glasses to record images and videos to watch Grozev on a flight from Vienna to Montenegro in June 2022, prosecutor Alison Morgan KC said. The group had accessed an airline industry database called “Amadeus” through another Bulgarian contact to ascertain the flight details and seat numbers of their targets, the court heard. 

Ivanova also sat nearby Dobrokhotov on a flight in November 2021 and memorised his phone pin code, reporting it back to her handlers, Morgan added. “That was a correct capture and showed the tradecraft of Miss Ivanova,” Morgan told the court. 

The group also discussed bribing hotel staff, employing pickpockets and infiltrating a target’s home by hiring Bulgarian and Romanian cleaning teams, the court heard. more

Bulgarian national Katrin Ivanova (Elizabeth Cook/PA)

and... Russian agent discussed deploying a “true sexy bitch” in a “honeytrap” spy plot against an award-winning journalist, a court has heard...Prosecutor Alison Morgan KC told jurors that, as well as trying to “befriend” Mr Gozev, Gaberova had been engaged in capturing surveillance images of him at the conference...

She said: “These images were extremely important as they showed Christo Grozev together with others of interest to Russia, Eliot Higgins. 

“Roussev would later seek to use face recognition software to check that the image did show Christo Grozev with Higgins together.”...

She showed off her “tradecraft” by relaying images, using covert recording equipment and capturing Mr Dobrokhotov’s iPhone PIN number, Mr Morgan said. more

TSCM Tech - Coating Hides Temp Changes from IR Cameras

An ultrathin coating developed by University of Wisconsin–Madison engineers upends a ubiquitous physics phenomenon of materials related to thermal radiation: The hotter an object gets, the brighter it glows.

The new coating — engineered from samarium nickel oxide, a unique tunable material — employs a bit of temperature trickery.

“This is the first time temperature and thermal light emission have been decoupled in a solid object. We built a coating that ‘breaks’ the relationship between temperature and thermal radiation in a very particular way,” says Mikhail Kats, a UW–Madison professor of electrical and computer engineering. more

Using a Device to Track medical data?

Are you using a device to track medical data? Here’s who else might be watching...
Wearable technology—smartwatches, smart rings, fitness trackers and the like—monitors body-centric data such as your heart rate, steps taken and calories burned, and may record where you go along the way. Like Santa Claus, it knows when you are sleeping (and how well), it knows when you're awake, it knows when you've been idle or exercising, and it keeps track of all of it...

Health information has become a prime target for hackers seeking to extort health care agencies and individuals after accessing sensitive patient data...

The report "From Skin to Screen: Bodily Integrity in the Digital Age" recommends that existing data protection laws be clarified to encompass all forms of bodily data. It also calls for expanding national health privacy laws to cover health-related information collected from health apps and fitness trackers and making it easier for users to opt out of body-centric data collections. more

3 Charged in Theft of Shoes from Train

Three men have been charged with breaking into a BNSF train and stealing more than $300,000 in Nike merchandise while the train was parked in the Mojave Desert and then transporting the stolen goods to Anaheim....

In an effort to prevent theft, Nike placed a GPS tracker in the shipment of Air Jordan 11 Retro shoes...

Investigators with the California Highway Patrol tracked the GPS tracker to a U-Haul truck in an Anaheim parking lot and found 1,278 Air Jordan 11 Retro shoes valued at $311,832 inside the rental truck. more

‘Prison yard’ Surveillance | Lawsuit Alleges Apple Spies on Employee's iPhones

An Apple worker has filed a lawsuit against the company, alleging it spies on its employee’s personal iCloud accounts and iPhones.

As reported by Semafor, the lawsuit filed Sunday claims Apple says it can “engage in physical, video and electronic surveillance” of employees, including accessing data on personal iPhones it “actively encourages” staff to work.

Apple refutes the claims of the lawsuit, which alleges several other employment law violations including free speech suppression and illegal clawback policies. more

New Eavesdropping Technology Reveals Vulnerabilities in Underwater Communications

Researchers from Princeton and MIT have uncovered a method for intercepting underwater communications...

...challenging long-standing assumptions about the security of sonar transmissions. By using radar to detect the tiny surface vibrations caused by underwater acoustic signals, the team has demonstrated how these signals can be decoded from the air, offering significant security implications for sensitive data transmitted underwater.

The team detailed their findings in a paper presented at the ACM MobiCom conference on November 20. According to TechXplore, they explained how their device can pick up vibrations on the water’s surface, allowing it to eavesdrop on underwater messages. This technique could also potentially identify the location of the transmitting underwater device, making it a powerful tool for intelligence gathering or adversarial actions. more

Canadian Coach Implicated in Drone-Spying Scandal Resigns Abruptly

John Herdman, the former Canada coach who was implicated in the drone-spying scandal, has abruptly resigned as manager of MLS side Toronto FC.

His reputation has been tarnished somewhat after he was caught up in the investigation into a Canada Soccer staffer spying on their New Zealand opponents with a drone at the 2024 Paris Olympics. The scandal saw head coach Bev Priestman, assistant coach Jasmine Mander and analyst Joey Lombardi all handed a one-year FIFA ban.Emma Hayes fulfills national anthem promise before USWNT vs. England friendly.

Herman denied any wrongdoing in the scandal given his previous role as head coach. He declined to publicly address allegations of a link to a culture of spying within Canada Soccer but maintained his record was clean at the Olympics and World Cups. more

China’s Anti-Espionage Law Could Impact Pharmaceutical Supply Chains

The pharmaceutical industry is facing another challenge as China seems to strengthen its Anti-Espionage Law, which introduces uncertainties that could disrupt the global supply of essential drug ingredients. With drug shortages already a significant concern, this development adds further pressure on the industry to navigate a rapidly changing landscape and secure its supply chains...

The last version of China’s Anti-Espionage Law, which came into force on 1st July 2023, significantly expands the definition of espionage to include the handling or sharing of information that could be seen as a threat to national security. This broad definition puts foreign life sciences companies operating in China at risk, as routine business activities could now be interpreted as a threat to national security. This law also grants extensive powers to the Chinese authorities to implement national security measures, including arrests.

One immediate consequence of this law is that three German states recently suspended the travel of their inspectors responsible for monitoring pharmaceutical facilities in China, due to the risk of the inspectors being arrested, prompting the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs to respond on 19th August 2024 that "China is a country ruled by law". more

AI CCTV - Creating a Surveillance Society

Premiering in New York City in June 2002, Steven Spielberg’s critically acclaimed film Minority Report, starring Tom Cruise, depicted a society where police use psychic mutants to predict and prevent murderers from committing their crimes. Now, South Korean company Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) is using AI to make it a reality. 

Aptly named ‘Dejaview,’ ETRI’s high-tech platform blends AI with real-time CCTV to predict crimes before they transpire. But whereas the Pre-Crime department Tom Cruise heads in Minority Report focused on criminal intention, Dejaview is instead concerned with probability. 

ETRI says the platform can discern patterns and anomalies in real-time scenarios, allowing it to predict incidents from petty offences to drug trafficking with a sci-fi-esque 82% accuracy rate. more

Fry Spy: What's Done in an Air Fryer Doesn't Stay in an Air Fryer

UK consumer champion Which? wants you to know that your air fryer might be spying on you and sharing your data with third parties for marketing purposes.

The perhaps not-so-surprising findings from the buyer's friend are that smart devices in general are engaged in surveillance of their owners, and that data collection often goes "well beyond" what is necessary for the functioning of the product...

Testing out products across four categories, the outfit discovered that all three air fryers it looked at wanted permission to record audio on the user's phone, for no specified reason.

One wanted to know gender and date of birth when setting up an owner account, while the Xiaomi app linked to its air fryer was found to be connected with trackers from Facebook, Pangle (the ad network of TikTok for Business), and Chinese tech giant Tencent.

Air fryers from brands Aigostar and Xiaomi both sent the owner's personal data to servers in China – although this was flagged in the privacy notice, for what it's worth. more

Giambattista della Porta (1535 – 1615): The Egg-cryption Man

Della Porta invented a method which allowed him to write secret messages on the inside of eggs. 

Some of his friends were imprisoned by the Inquisition. At the gate of the prison, everything was checked except for eggs. Della Porta wrote messages on the eggshell using a mixture made of plant pigments and alum. The ink penetrated the eggshell which is semi-porous. When the eggshell was dry, he boiled the egg in hot water and the ink on the outside of the egg was washed away. 

When the recipient in prison peeled off the shell, the message was revealed once again on the egg white. - Philalethe Reveal'd Vol. 2 B/W

Man Destroys Dental Clinic Claimed Dentist Implanted Eavesdropping Chip

... in wife's tooth.

A woman and her husband have justified their decision to damage a Brazilian dental clinic after they strangely claimed the dentist secretly placed a chip in her mouth three years ago to eavesdrop on their family's conversations.

The shocking incident was recorded from the Belo Horizonte office when 27-year-old Kenia Aparecida and her 31-year-old partner came and asked to see the dentist on Wednesday, the Telegraph reports.

"They pulled out two of my teeth and without my authorization, they put a chip in my mouth and listened to my conversations. But my husband saw that it was in (the mouth) and the dentist does not want to take it out". more with video

Runaway 'Spy Whale' Fled Russian Military Training

The mystery as to why a beluga whale appeared off the coast of Norway wearing a harness may finally have been solved.

The tame white whale, which locals named Hvaldimir, made headlines five years ago amidst widespread speculation that it was a Russian spy.

Now an expert in the species says she believes the whale did indeed belong to the military and escaped from a naval base in the Arctic Circle.

But Dr Olga Shpak does not believe it was a spy. She believes the beluga was being trained to guard the base and fled because it was a "hooligan". more

The Last Thing I Wanted to See...

In the parking lot,
after completing a TSCM bug sweep...

Chinese Spooks Hacking US Mobile Users in Real Time

Millions of US mobile users could be vulnerable to Chinese government spooks who are apparently desperate to know when they are picking up their snowflakes from school and where they order their pizza...

The US intelligence community briefed six current or former senior US officials about the attack. The Chinese hackers believed to be linked to Beijing's Ministry of State Security, have infiltrated the private wiretapping and surveillance system that American telecom companies built exclusively for US federal law enforcement agencies.

The US government believes the hackers likely still have access to the system. Since the breach was first detected in August, the US government and the telecom companies involved have said very little publicly, leaving the public to rely on details trickling out through leaks.

The lawful-access system breached by the Salt Typhoon hackers was established by telecom carriers after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. It allows federal law enforcement officials to execute legal warrants for records of Americans' phone activity or to wiretap them in real-time, depending on the warrant.

Many of these cases are authorised under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which investigates foreign spying involving contact with US citizens. The system is also used for legal wiretaps related to domestic crimes. more