Survey - More Women Hiring Private Investigators

Women are increasingly employing private investigators to check on their cheating husbands, a new survey of divorce lawyers shows today.

With extra-marital affairs the main reason for the break-up of marriage, more than two in three lawyers surveyed last year had at least one client who had used a private investigator to find out if their spouse was being unfaithful.

In two thirds of the cases it was women who were checking on husbands, the survey of 100 lawyers by Grant Thornton’s forensic and investigation services shows. (more)

Private investigators: no longer in the shadows
Once it was the murky world of dirty raincoats and skulking in shadows. But the private investigator is now fast becoming a standard aid to divorce.

Paul Hawkes, 49, has run his own firm, Research Associates, in West London, for 31 years. “Last year I had probably 100 to 200 cases involving checking on extra-marital affairs,” he said. “Ten years ago it would have been fewer 50.”

One reason for the change was that women in particular, who were the bulk of the clients, were now far more “pragmatic” and “not prepared to suffer in silence or sweep things under the bed. Now they want to know what is going on.” (more)

SpyCam Story #437 - Pinhole PIN Bandits

UK - Police investigating a bank card cloning scam at a petrol station found a small, drilled hole in the ceiling above a chip-and-pin machine.

It is thought the hole, at a BP garage in Lincoln, was used to conceal a covert camera to record the pin numbers of unsuspecting motorists.

Lincolnshire Police said on Friday they had received more than 200 reports of fraudulent transactions from people who filled up at the petrol station, on the A46 at Damons Roundabout.
Victims' cards were used as far away as India and Dubai in what the force said was a national scam, not unique to the county. (more)

Basic Email Security Tips

Chad Perrin at TechRepublic has some excellent tips...
There is a lot of information out there about securing your email. Much of it is advanced, and doesn’t apply to the typical end user. The following is a short list of some important security tips that apply to all email users...

1. Never allow an email client to fully render HTML or XHTML emails without careful thought.
2. If the privacy of your data is important to you, use a local POP3 or IMAP client to retrieve email. This means avoiding the use of Web based email services such as GMail, Hotmail, and Yahoo! Mail for email you wish to keep private for any reason.
3. It is always a good idea to ensure that your email authentication process is encrypted, even if the email itself is not. (lazy man's email encryption)
4. Digitally sign your emails. As long as you observe good security practices with email in general, it is highly unlikely that anyone else will ever have the opportunity to usurp your identity for purposes of email, but it is still a possibility. (What is a digital signature?)
5. If, for some reason, you absolutely positively must access an email account that does not authorize over an encrypted connection, never access that account from a public or otherwise unsecured network. Ever. Under any circumstances.

Be aware of both your virtual and physical surroundings when communicating via email. Be careful. Trust no one that you do not absolutely have to trust, and recognize the dangers and potential consequences of that trust.

Your email security does not just affect you; it affects others, as well, if your email account is compromised. (full article with greater tip detail)

TSCM Technology - Keeping Pace

The tools of the trade change fast in the world of TSCM.
Blink, and you're sweep business is history.
Here are three examples of the latest tools...

Recently
Too many digital radio signals. Some of them flash on/off, quickly. Some frequency hop, quickly. Some hide within other signals. This year, a new instrument came out of the R&D labs called RSA6114A . It never blinks. It catches it all.

NOW
Too many digital radio signals. How can one identify them all? This week, a new instrument came out of the R&D labs called H600 RFhawk Signal Hunter. It knows all. It tells all... at a reasonable price.


The Future
Having Superman x-ray vision would be a big help in finding eavesdropping devices. A new instrument is in the R&D labs called LEXID. Handheld x-ray vision. Just point, and see!

TSCM challenges do not become easier with time. You can, however, count on us to keep pace and slightly ahead.

Unsecured Wi-Fi Could Compromise Your Identity

CBS3.com - Special Report...
The wireless internet signal you rely on for convenience could be making things easier for internet intruders. Police said hackers could be using your computer to download illegal music, child porn, or even your bank information.

Using a simple can antenna from his car, George Sandford can burglarize homes from hundreds of yards away out in the open and without wearing a mask.

"You can open bank accounts. You get drivers licenses, you can get practically anything you want," Sandford said.

All by using relatively low tech equipment, just about anyone with knowledge can hack into computers using unsecured wireless internet or Wi-Fi signals of unsuspecting people...

"I can build a body of information about you, your back accounts," Sandford said.

Jamie Smith spoke to one unsuspecting resident, "We were able to get onto your internet just a few seconds ago," and Rebecca Hansen of Swarthmore responded, "No."

Rebecca is a client of Tech Guides Incorporated and George Sandford is far from a thief. He is actually Tech Guides' security expert. He sat down and showed Rebecca how to secure her Wi-Fi something everyone should do.

"Not securing your wireless networking is pretty much putting a sign on your house saying 'Hey, we're open,'" Sanford said. Only about half of homes with Wi-Fi are locked. If you don't your computer's connection could be slowed down by others accidentally using your Wi-Fi. (complete story with video)

• Directions for securing your Wi-Fi

Global Info Survey - CIO's Get Smart

A growing number of organizations recognize information security can provide more than just protection of corporate assets, with the delivery of IT and operational efficiencies and improving overall business performance emerging as critical objectives. That is the word from Ernst & Young's 10th annual global information security survey. The survey canvassed nearly 1,300 senior executives in more than 50 countries. (more)

Abusive Teacher Caught On Tape

A Houston mother, who said her daughter was well-behaved at home, was worried about what was going on in her child's classroom because the girl had been suspended four times for bad behavior.

Teacher: 'Y'all Are Just Stupid Kids'
So, Diana Mijares decided to secretly bug her daughter's backpack and was shocked to hear what was on the tape.

"It made us concerned," Mijares said on "Good Morning America" today. "It was enough and we needed answers."

Megan Mijares' digital tape recorded mostly mundane moments at Memorial Elementary School's prekindergarten class, but then it captured the teacher yelling at the group of 4- and 5-year-olds. All of it happened without Megan's or her teacher's knowledge.

"You're just a bad kid," the teacher says on the six-hour tape. "You're mean to me, so I get to be mean to you."

The teacher, who was not identified, continues to harshly scold the children.

"You are all just stupid kids. I swear to God," the teacher says. "You are just all stupid kids." (more) (video)

"Grab the binoculars. The girls are headed for the Blue Lagoon!"

Regime revives Fiji spy agency
The interim Cabinet will revive the National Security Council and the Fiji Intelligence Services. A statement from the interim Cabinet said this was a move to combat threats of terrorism against Fiji. (more)

Liechtenstein reveals industrial spying probe

Liechtenstein, focus of international investigations over tax fraud, said on Wednesday a man convicted after stealing data from a Liechtenstein bank was now being investigated for industrial espionage...

"The investigations concern suspicion of spying out business secrets for the benefit of a foreign party," the Office of the Public Prosecutor said in a statement. (more)

German high court conditionally approves government data spying

Germany's Constitutional Court has determined that any data stored or exchanged on PCs is private and protected by the country's constitution -- just not if you're a suspect.

The court determined that data collection directly encroaches on citizens' rights, but that authorities will be allowed to spy on suspicious individuals with high court approval. (more)

2007 Electronic Monitoring & Surveillance Survey:

Over Half of All Employers Combined Fire Workers for E-Mail & Internet Abuse

From e-mail monitoring and Website blocking to phone tapping and GPS tracking, employers increasingly combine technology with policy to manage productivity and minimize litigation, security, and other risks. To motivate compliance with rules and policies, more than one fourth of employers have fired workers for misusing e-mail and nearly one third have fired employees for misusing the Internet, according to the 2007 Electronic Monitoring & Surveillance Survey from American Management Association (AMA) and The ePolicy Institute. (more)

PartnerSpy vs. PartnerSpy

In Scotland, where punches are not pulled, a daily newspaper instructs its readers, "How To Spy On Your Partner." For us, of course, it is a cautionary tale. These tactics may be employed by anyone, against anyone.

Partner vs. Partner is only one of many snoop scenarios. Here are some others:
- Employees vs. Management
- Ambitious Executive vs. Unsuspecting Executive
- Competitor vs. You
- Defendant vs. Plaintiff
- News Media / Protest Groups vs. Your Company

Being aware of 'everyman' spy technology is the first step toward protection. The second step is actively looking. Which, by the way, is what we do best for businesses and governments worldwide.

How To Spy On Your Partner
Feb 27 2008 By Craig McQueen

Lipstick on collars or smelling of a strange perfume used to be how cheating husbands got caught out. But in these days of big divorce settlements, spurned partners are gathering evidence the hi-tech way.

One US firm has produced a SIM card reader that opens text messages AFTER they've been deleted - and that's just the tip of the iceberg. Other surveillance gadgets used today would look at home in spy films. They're legal and freely available from websites spystoreuk.com, spycatcheronline.co.uk and brickhousesecurity.com

Here are a few of the best: (described in detail here)
- HIDDEN CAMERAS
- MOBILE PHONE TRACKING
- WIRELESS BUGS
- PHONE RECORDERS
- GPS TRACKING
- COMPUTER KEY LOGGING
- THE TEDDY CAM
- INTERCEPTOR SOFTWARE
- VEHICLE TRACKING

SpyCam Story #436 - SpyCam Goes to School

from "blammocamo"...
"I 'hid' my camera and caught some clips of what people were doing during spare period." (boring video) (many many more boring videos)

We've come a long way from the days of Alan Funt. SpyCam'ing is an acknowledged worldwide pass-time. One second you are anonymous, the next second your are a star on youtube.com. Laws are always about 10-years behind the technology. Look for spycams to make some creative legislation.

In the meantime, at least take some steps to protect your workplace and the intellectual property kept there.

Ideas...
- Establish security policy which includes videography.
- Conduct periodic sweeps for video bugging devices.
- Learn to recognize the spycamer's tricks. (1) (2) (3), for example.

FREE Password Cracker

Here is how it works in geek-speak...
RainbowCrack is a general propose implementation of Philippe Oechslin's faster time-memory trade-off technique. In short, the RainbowCrack tool is a hash cracker. A traditional brute force cracker try all possible plaintexts one by one in cracking time. It is time consuming to break complex password in this way. The idea of time-memory trade-off is to do all cracking time computation in advance and store the result in files so called "rainbow table". It does take a long time to precompute the tables. But once the one time precomputation is finished, a time-memory trade-off cracker can be hundreds of times faster than a brute force cracker, with the help of precomputed tables.

Bottom line...
Your cat's name never was a good password anyway. Change it. (help)

National Lottery operator employee spied on rivals

UK - A manager at Camelot, the national lottery operator, used false identities to gather intelligence on rival companies, according to an official investigation.

Alexia Latham, a media relations manager, used three aliases to glean information over a 10-month period as Camelot fought off competitors to win a lucrative 10-year licence...

Camelot, which has run the UK lottery since it started in 1994, was awarded a new 10-year licence by the NLC last August.

Following a close competition, the company beat off a rival bid from Sugal & Damani, which runs state lotteries in India. The new licence will begin in February next year. (more)