Some Eavesdropping Okay in All Party Consent State (PA)

Recently, in Commonwealth v. Mason, J-44-2020 No. 69 MAP 2019 (March 25, 2021), the Pennsylvania Supreme Court held that audio interceptions, made in the bedroom of toddler-aged victims of a nanny’s physical and verbal abuse, when such interceptions were captured by a camera hidden in a bedroom of the house by the father (and house owner) of the toddler-aged victims, did not violate the rights of the defendant (the nanny) under the Wiretapping and Electronic Surveillance Act (Wiretap Act), 18 Pa.C.S. Sections 5701-5782, and so were admissible. The Supreme Court drew a proper and logical conclusion from the facts and the law and, hopefully, brought us closer to a reasonable look at the issue... more

Coca-Cola Chemist Guilty of Stealing Trade Secrets, Espionage

While Coca-Cola’s namesake syrup for its flagship soft drink is one of the most well-known trade secrets in food manufacturing, the beverage giant’s other secrets apparently are a little more vulnerable.

On April 22, the U.S. Department of Justice said that a federal jury in Tennessee convicted a Michigan woman of conspiracy to steal trade secrets, economic espionage and wire fraud regarding Coke’s formulas for its BPA-free coatings inside its beverage cans. She was originally indicted in February 2019, with a superseding indictment charged in August of last year.

According to court documents and evidence presented during her 12-day trial, 59-year-old Dr. Xiaorong You, who goes by Shannon You, stole the valuable formulation material while working for the company in Atlanta and at Eastman Chemical Company in Kingsport, Tennessee. The stolen BPA trade secrets belonged to major chemical and coating makers that include Akzo-Nobel, BASF, Dow Chemical, PPG and others, and cost nearly 120 million dollars to develop. more

MI6 is Hiring "Q" Anonymously

Can you turn a wristwatch into an explosive, or perhaps you are able to design some X-ray glasses to see who is carrying a concealed weapon?

If so, perhaps you should apply to be the next "Q" at Britain's MI6 foreign spy service.

The head of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service said on Thursday (April 29) that the spy agency was hunting for a new tech chief, "Director General Q", known to all James Bond movie fans simply as "Q".

"We're looking for a new 'Q'. If you want to serve your country by helping MI6 to develop the operational technology of the future, please take a look," Mr Richard Moore wrote on Twitter...

The ad warned that the successful candidate would "not be publicly avowed", while there was no mention of any ability to design watches with lasers or bagpipes that turn into flamethrowers. more

Too Smart for Their Own Good, Smart TVs

A recent revelation regarding privacy violations by Skyworth TV has rattled smart TV users in China...the app that does the job is called Gozen Data, which is pre-installed on the TV’s Android system and which would scan the devices, sending back data from hostname, Mac, ip addresses, network delay times, and even nearby WiFi SSID names to a database called gz-data.com.

The website traces back to Dozen, a big data company. At time of this article’s publication, the official website of Gozen has gone into repair, but other open resources show that this company has long established partnerships with not only Skyworth, but also a series of smart TV manufacturers as well, including Sanyo, TCL, Toshiba and Philips. The firm collects data by implanting system development kits in the system layer, and is able to draw a massive amount of information... more

Guess Who Had Lower Pandemic Numbers

via John Jay College...

The COVID-19 pandemic is one of the reasons that national security investigations of possible terrorists and those working for foreign agents fell sharply last year, says a new government report. 

Far fewer targets underwent secret surveillance, according to NPR. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act empowers the FBI to monitor the communications inside the United States of people suspected of being agents of a foreign power. more

Drone Spying Claims 'Tiger King' star Jeff Lowe

'Tiger King' star Jeff Lowe claims Carol Baskin, husband Howard were spying on his property with drones. Howard Baskin denied snooping on the 'Tiger King' star in a statement to Fox News.

The owner of the Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park in Oklahoma alleged to TMZ on Tuesday that he called local police to report some activity at his plot in Thackerville after his son supposedly spotted a drone flying high above the property.

The "Tiger King" star further claims that when he went to confront a film crew that appeared to be filming, Baskin and Howard bolted and Lowe ended up in a scuffle with one of his neighbors, who was allegedly with the film crew.

Lowe’s neighbors – a couple – ran away when confronted but the neighbors' son allegedly got in a tussle with Lowe, the gossip site reported Lowe told them of the incident on Tuesday. more

 

Animal Surveillance Tech - Bird Buddy

You want a Bird Buddy? It’s a smart bird feeder that notifies you via an app when a feathered friend has approached the vicinity.

The in-built camera turns on, records and takes pictures of the wee thing as it pecks away at the bird seed. And you can get your kicks as you watch it and take pictures on your phone.

The team behind the Bird Buddy says it captures their photos and organizes them in a “beautiful collection that is easy to view and share." more

Note: This is a crowd-funded project.
$7,132,542 USD by 30,767 backers
$5,092,995 USD by 22,921 backers on Jan 14, 2021 with another platform

China Steps up Monitoring of Foreigners in Anti-Spying Push

Chinese social groups, enterprises and public entities will have increased responsibility to combat foreign espionage under new regulations issued by the country’s ministry of state security.

The regulations, which were released and took effect on Monday, come amid deepening hostilities between China and some western governments, including over the detention of foreigners accused of national security crimes.

According to state media, state security will work with other government departments to “adjust” the list of groups susceptible to foreign espionage and to develop measures to safeguard against it, including Chinese Communist Party and state organs, social groups, enterprises and public institutions. more

This Blast from the Past Kickstarter Funded Fast: "The Prisoner" Action Figures

 In 1967 the cult classic TV series, THE PRISONER, came bursting onto the screen. The series, about an unnamed British intelligence agent who awakes to find himself trapped in an idyllic seaside village, was not only an instant hit with viewers at the time, it went on to be watched and re-watched obsessively by fans, quickly gaining cult status. 

While there have been several collectables released over the decades, THE PRISONER has never received a line of OFFICIALLY LICENSED ACTION FIGURES… and Wandering Planet Toys is working with our licensing partners at ITV Studios to bring to life 4-inch RETRO STYLE ACTION FIGURES that celebrate Patrick McGoohan’s brilliant series. 

But we need the crowdfunding support of PRISONER and ACTION FIGURE fans to make these figures a reality! 

Want to get information about these figures? Good, because by hook or by crook you will! 

Feeling like a prisoner?
Need a vacation?
I can personally recommend this... Portmeirion Village | Holiday Resort North Wales  Portmeirion is an enchanting Italianate style village on the coast of North Wales, ideal for a day out or weekend break for families, couples and more.

PI Alert: Samsung is Crippling Your Latest Surveillance Trick

Samsung has announced that customers will soon be able to scan for unknown Galaxy SmartTags trackers using Samsung’s SmartThings Find service. The feature, called Unknown Tag Search, will be coming to the SmartThings app starting next week. 

Users will be able to scan the nearby area for any SmartTags that don’t belong to them but that are moving along with them. This feature could be a big win for safety, providing an easy way to make sure that nobody’s tracking you with a tiny SmartTag that they slipped in your backpack, purse, coat pocket, etc. It’s a nice feature if you’re concerned about the privacy or security implications of Tile-like tracking devices. more

TSCM History - 17 Years Ago Today - Sergio (Sarge) Borquez

via Rick Hoffmann...

   I am sorry to report the passing of Sergio (Sarge) Borquez at
approximately 4:30 a.m. on April 20, 2004.  Sarge died of heart failure.

   For those who did not have the pleasure of knowing him, Sarge was one of
the early TSCM professionals.  He joined the Drug Enforcement Agency
shortly after separating from the U.S. Army where he served with the 101st
Airborne (if I recall correctly) during the Korean Conflict.  While with
the DEA he studied technical surveillance and became a specialist.  At one
time Sarge was in charge of providing technical surveillance in the 7
western states.  He was also responsible for installing the DEA's very
first wiretap.  There is a photo of Sarge climbing a telephone pole to
reach the ready access boot to install the tap.  It is a terrific picture.

   Sarge was a humble man who did not discuss his exploits with many
people.  I am privileged to have known him, and to have benefited by his
instruction.  He will be missed  by all who knew him. 

Killer Eavesdropped on Couple for a Year Before Crossbow Killing

UK - Senior Coroner Prof Paul Marks previously heard how Mr Gilmer had told a 999 call handler, after he had been shot, that Lawrence had been listening to the couple's conversations for a year. Mr Gibbs said Lawrence was "a loner with no immediate friends". more 

A loner installed a listening device to eavesdrop on neighbours and altered crossbow darts to make them more lethal before launching a “carefully planned, premeditated” attack, which killed a council worker and seriously injured his pregnant girlfriend...Before shooting Ms Sugden in the head, he told her he’d been listening to them for a year - which was later apparently confirmed by the police's discovery of a listening device with a microphone fixed to his living room wall. more

They found a listening device with a microphone next to his book case which he had used to eavesdrop on the couple's conversations through the wall, Hull Coroner's Court heard...Coroner will call for ban on crossbow sales... more

Chinese Hackers Selling Footage From Home Security Cams for $3

Chinese hackers have stolen videos from tens of thousands of security cameras in private properties across the country and are selling the video clips online as “home video packages,” the Chinese outlet Henan Television reported.

The video footage showcases clips from cameras installed by homeowners for security reasons or others secretly installed by ill-intentioned people in hotels, fitting rooms and beauty salons.

The videos are priced based on how exciting they are and are sold via social media, according to an undercover investigative report aired by the television station on Monday. more  more

You don't have to be a victim. Learn how to spot spycams.

Spycam News: So far in April...

ID - Deputies have arrested a Jefferson County man for allegedly using a home security camera to secretly record a woman and a teenage girl in the shower. Daniel J Hendrickson, 38...told a Jefferson County Sheriff’s detective his “stupidity” and “curiosity” led him to place a wireless camera in a bathroom to record the woman and the teenage girl. more

Singapore - While at a church camp, he heard a woman showering in the toilet and took a video of her. The 20-year-old, who was 16 at the time, kept and watched the video repeatedly afterwards. He also took voyeuristic videos of three others - at an MRT station, a school toilet and a school canteen. more

UK - A consultant radiologist who was twice convicted of voyeurism after hiding his mobile phone to film women in toilets has been struck off the UK medical register...he admitted to covertly filming people using the restroom at his places of work as well as at his family home. more

Canada - Shawn Nickerson, a former basketball coach, has been sentenced to nine years in prison after pleading guilty to 32 charges – including voyeurism...Through the years Nickerson used a handful of “spy cameras” hidden in washrooms and changerooms to record unsuspecting boys – often when naked. There are 21 known victims. Nickerson took the images he captured to the dark web where...the images where “traded like cards.” more

FL - A South Florida restaurant employee is behind bars accused of taking video of a customer who was using the bathroom. more

UK - Business owner Scott Ennis secretly filmed her in the bedroom, recorded her work conversations with a hidden microphone and deployed a member of his staff to spy on her. Louisa Ennis had no idea what was going on until she spotted a mystery device showing up on her wi-fi router and discovered it was her husband’s spy camera. more

Canada - Al Young, a long-time real estate agent and property manager from New Minas, N.S., was charged with voyeurism after a modified mirror was discovered in a building bathroom at the Blomidon Terrace in Wolfville, N.S.... Police say it was an elaborate set-up. more

Japan - Nagano Prefectural Police have arrested a civic employee for Nagano City over the alleged trespassing into a female acquaintance’s residence... According to police, his purpose for entering was to retrieve a hidden camera that he had planted inside two days before. more

WA - A Trilogy employee reported to the Walla Walla Police Department that Rosales had an iPad Pro tablet recording in an office restroom when he asked her to go into the restroom and try on two shirts while not wearing a bra. The employee later said in a statement to investigators that the request from her boss was ostensibly to give an opinion if the T-shirts being sold as part of a fundraiser were too “see-through” to be appropriate. more

Japan - Police have arrested a 28-year-old female high school teacher and her 29-year-old ex-boyfriend on suspicion of violating the child prostitution and pornography law after they took voyeuristic images of girls in the changing room at a hot springs facility in 2016. more

UK - Female nudists demand new security measures on Brighton naturist beach after men were caught secretly taking photos. more

MI - A Michigan man has been arrested after police say he was caught on a hidden camera poisoning his co-worker's water bottle with anti-freeze. more

FL - A former Tampa teacher has pleaded guilty to more than 300 counts of video voyeurism after being accused of secretly recording 124 students and an adult teacher undressing over a two year period. Mark William Ackett, 52, taught fashion design and coached girls track at Bloomingdale High School. more

OH - The suspect facing voyeurism charges has turned himself in. Armani Martin, 21, is the suspect in an investigation into someone recording people inside business bathrooms, according to Fairfield Township police. Martin is being charged with voyeurism, police say. more

SC - A 78-year-old Summerton man was arrested on March 8 for allegedly placing a fake smoke detector containing a camera inside a neighbor's home. more

UT - Jarom Brown, an adjunct instructor in the theater department, stepped down after police arrested him on charges of voyeurism and harassment. Brown released a video of the two engaged in a “romantic encounter” in hopes of exoneration but was instead arrested on several counts of voyeurism and harassment. Sue claims that in both the photo and the video she was entirely unaware she was being recorded. more

WA - A Whatcom County man is suspected of using a camera disguised to look like a cellphone charger to capture video and images of four children between the ages of 12 and 17 undressing, using the bathroom and showering. All four victims were known to the man. more

You don't have to be a victim. Learn how to spot spycams.

Recording Calls Without Consent Still Illegal, California Supreme Court Rules

California’s prohibition on secretly recording phone calls applies to both parties on the call and not just third-party eavesdroppers, the California Supreme Court ruled Thursday.

The court’s unanimous decision reverses the Fourth Appellate District’s opposite interpretation from 2019 that the law applies only to nonparties and does not forbid those on the call from recording each other without consent.
California’s penal code Section 632.7 makes it a crime to record or intercept a phone call “without the consent of all parties.”

This was the basis for a 2016 lawsuit by Jeremiah Smith, who claimed the loan provider LoanMe Inc. recorded him without his consent during an 18-second call in violation of Section 632.7. more

Spy History: The CIA Heart Attack Gun

You can say that the gun looks like a toy at best, especially with that ridiculous scope, but from the descriptions of the American senator Franck Church, the weapon is scary, to say the least, even to today’s standards.

The CIA needed a weapon to take care of the targets on their blacklist without living any sort of trace that would bring up suspicions in the media. One of the hot targets was Fidel Castro, the Prime Minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976. Killing people from a distance was the go-to choice, but every bullet can be traced back. Getting too close to the target would risk the agent being compromised.

This is why the CIA gave the task of creating a new secret weapon to Mary Embree. Embree started working at the CIA as a secretary in the audio surveillance department. With time she got promoted to the technical services department where she was asked specifically to research a new poison that would induce a heart attack on its victim but undetectable in a post-mortem verification.

The technical team came up with a gun that would shoot poisoned projectiles that would dissolve inside the target and induce a heart attack which would be undetectable upon post-mortem. Embree wasn’t able to confirm if the gun was used to assassinate someone, but she did confirm that animals, as well as prisoners, were used to test the weapon.

To explain the strange scope on top of the weapon, besides being a pistol, the gun had had the ability to shot the poisoned projectile from 100 meters with good accuracy, hence the scope. more

Nanny Cam Catches Home Inspector with Elmo Doll

A home inspector caught ... with an Elmo doll has been charged with two misdemeanor counts in a Rochester Hills district court. 

Kevin Wayne VanLuven, 59, was arraigned on charges of aggravated indecent exposure and malicious destruction of property under $200. Bond was set at $2,500 cash or surety. 

The charges stem from a March 12 incident in Oxford Township, when homeowners asked to have their property inspected at request of the buyers. A nursery camera detected movement, the news release said, so the 22-year-old homeowner checked her phone and caught VanLuven in the act. After he finished ... he returned the doll to its original place, the release said. more

Coca-Cola Trade Secret Theft Underscores Importance of Early Detection

The trial of Xiaorong You is set to begin today, April 6, in Greenville, TN. She is accused of trade secret theft and economic espionage after allegedly stealing bisphenol-A-free (BPA-free) technologies owned by several companies, including her former employers Coca-Cola and Eastman Chemical Company. 

The value placed on the development of the stolen technologies is $119.6 million. Other affected companies include Azko-Nobel, Dow Chemical, PPG, TSI, Sherwin Williams and ToyoChem.

Two actions could have stopped the theft or lessened its impact:

• Real-time alerts and processes designed to prevent sensitive and protected data from exiting the corporate environment.
• Prohibiting personal and non-authorized electronic devices, including smartphones, from proximity to trade secrets or sensitive installations. 

Using the smartphone’s camera to copy documents and workspace is a throwback technique of espionage days of old, when miniature and subminiature cameras would be used to copy documents from within restricted spaces. more 

See Murray Associates - Recording in the Workplace Recommendations

Electric Aircraft Start-Up Accuses Rival of Stealing Its Secrets

The age of electric planes may still be years away, but the fight for that market is already heating up.

Wisk Aero, a start-up developing an electric aircraft that takes off like a helicopter and flies like a plane, on Tuesday sued another start-up, Archer Aviation, accusing it of stealing trade secrets and infringing on Wisk’s patents.

The lawsuit brings into public view a dispute between two little-known companies in a business that has become a playground for billionaires. It also entangles giants of aviation and technology. Wisk is a joint venture of Boeing and Kitty Hawk, which is financed by Larry Page, who co-founded Google. Archer’s investors include United Airlines, which is a major Boeing customer and plans to buy up to 200 aircraft from the start-up...

Filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, the lawsuit accuses two engineers of downloading thousands of files containing confidential designs and data before leaving Wisk to join Archer. Wisk accused a third engineer of wiping history of his activities from his computer before leaving for Archer. more

Spy History: KGB Spy in 1961 Used X-Ray to Crack U.S. Top-Secret Lock

In late 1961 [Robert Lee Johnson] received the top-secret clearance and was admitted into the vault as a clerk. At long last the KGB was in. […] Over the following weeks the infiltration began in earnest as he successfully copied the vault keys using clay molds supplied by KGB operatives. 

In October of 1961 he received a specially manufactured X-ray device from Moscow that he was instructed to place over the final lock in the vault; KGB technicians could then deduce what combination unlocked the vault by studying the cogs inside the locking mechanism...

On 15 December 1962, Johnson accessed the vault for the first time and looted its contents. The operation, extensively rehearsed beforehand, went exactly as planned and by 03:15 the following morning some of America’s most sensitive cryptographic and military information⁠—some of it classified higher than top secret⁠—was on its way to Moscow. more

Lawmakers: Fund Tech to Thwart Telco Spies

Lawmakers want Biden to fund technology they say could secure American telecommunications companies from spies.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers is urging President Biden to include $3 billion in funding for technology it says would reduce American reliance on Chinese telecommunications equipment that could provide a back door for spying.

The money would go to funds established by Congress last year to encourage more American companies to switch over to Open Radio Access Network (OpenRAN) technology. The technology is essentially the software version of the hardware components needed to connect phones within 5G networks. more

Does 5G create new cybersecurity risks?

5G will be able to accept millions of devices per square kilometer on its network, which will allow it to adapt to ever-increasing nomadic uses, such as the autonomous car generalization or remote surgical operations via robots located on the other side of the planet. 

The real promise of 5G will come in September 2021, with the third phase of 5G specifications. These are the data centers located a few kilometers from each branch, which will allow operators to process massive amounts of data and set up new applications for businesses.

 

However, increasing the number of connected devices means that this technology will become a major security issue for governments, people and businesses around the world. Indeed, it also multiplies the entry points of attack for cyber criminals. more

IKEA France Accused of Spying on Employees – Call for Prison Sentence

In an ongoing court case, a prosecutor has demanded IKEA France be fined some €2 million - and for a prison sentence for a former CEO - with the company accused of spying on hundreds of employees.

After five days of the sometimes stormy trial, the Versailles prosecutor's office demanded an “exemplary” sentence be passed down, to send a “strong message” to “all commercial companies”."

The issue at stake in this trial is "the protection of our private lives in the face of a threat, that of mass surveillance", prosecutor Paméla Tabardel told the court.

Fifteen defendants took the stand during the case, including former Ikea France executives, shop managers, but also police officers and the head of a private investigation company. more

Privoro Launches Audio Masking Chamber & RF Shield for Mobile Devices

(Press release) 
Privoro, today revealed its latest product, Vault, a first-of-its-kind defense against remote data capture. The Vault case is a two-in-one portable Faraday enclosure and audio masking chamber for smartphones, providing unsurpassed protection against not only wireless attacks and location tracking but also eavesdropping and spying.

Vault eliminates smartphone signals more effectively than portable, fabric-based Faraday products, delivering a minimum of 100 dB of radio frequency (RF) attenuation – 10 billion times signal reduction. When a smartphone is placed in the Vault case, the smartphone can no longer be reached via cellular, WiFi, Bluetooth, near-field communication (NFC) and radio-frequency identification (RFID).

In addition to RF shielding, Vault's user-controlled audio masking prevents the extraction of intelligible speech up to voice levels of 90 dBA through independent noise signals. Users will have the assurance that conversations in the vicinity of Vault cannot be deliberately captured by bad actors through the enclosed smartphone's cameras and microphones.

Privoro developed Vault to meet the requirements of nation-state customers seeking to tackle the long-standing unique and critical security risks that mobile devices pose. more

 

Criminal Group Accused of Wiretapping State Officals & Companies

The Sverdlovsk Region law enforcement officers apprehended several members of a criminal group over a case of illegal wiretapping of state officials and lawmakers...

"On March 30, police officers carried out a series of searches at residences of members of a criminal group as part of a case ‘on illegal wiretapping.’ The searches took place at 13 locations simultaneously. The wide-scale operation was triggered by an attempt of a key suspect to hide abroad. He was apprehended on March 27 during an attempt to cross the border with Kazakhstan," the source said.

According to the source, the wiretapping of city administration officials and city Duma deputies, as well as regional authorities and representatives of major companies took place in the fall of 2019. more

Spy-turned-TV Host Anna Chapman Urges Russians to Get Vaccinated

Anna Chapman, the Russian intelligence agent busted for spying in the Big Apple in 2010, has now taken on a new mission – persuading vaccine doubters in the Motherland to be jabbed against COVID-19.

The flamed-haired former femme fatale told viewers on REN TV that “the health of your loved ones depends on your decision.”

Chapman, who had been working in real estate in New York, made headlines in 2010 when she was revealed to be part of a Russian sleeper cell.

She was deported to Russia shortly after along with nine other spies as part of a massive prisoner swap and is now a TV presenter. more

Intel Sued Under Wiretapping Laws

FL - A class-action suit in Lake County, Florida, alleges that Intel unlawfully intercepted communications without user consent. The claim is backed by the usage of analytics technology on Intel’s company website. Intel capitalizes on session-replay software to capture the interactions of people visiting the corporate homepage, a violation of user rights.

According to the lawsuit, Intel is violating the Florida state wiretapping law by capturing keystrokes, mouse movements, and other similar session-replay tech. more

G. Gordon Liddy, convicted Watergate conspirator, dies at 90

G. Gordon Liddy, the political operative who supervised the Watergate burglary, which brought down President Richard Nixon, died Tuesday, his family said. He was 90.

Liddy's family said in a statement that he died Tuesday morning at his daughter's home in Mount Vernon, Virginia. It did not give a cause of death. His son, James, said that the cause was not related to Covid-19, and that he had been dealing with Parkinson's disease.

Liddy was one of the organizers of the 1972 break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the office building with the name that would forever be linked to one of the biggest political scandals in American history...

Liddy was convicted of conspiracy, burglary and wiretapping in 1973 and sentenced to 20 years in prison. Years later, he declared, "I'd do it again for my president."...

In an interview with WHYY "Fresh Air" in 1980 after the publication of his autobiography, Liddy described unusual ways of overcoming fears as a child, including rats.

He went to the waterfront to confront the rats, but they would swim away. When his sister's cat killed a rat, he decided to eat it. "And so I cooked and consumed part of the rat. And thereafter, I had no fear of rats," Liddy said. more

Breaking: Billions of Online Trading Broker Records Have Been Leaked

Researchers at WizCase have discovered a massive data leak that belongs to FBS, a Cyprus-based online trading broker used by millions of traders in over 190 countries. 

The leak includes sensitive personally identifiable information (PII), financial information, government documents, numbers, and even passwords in plaintext form...

The consequences for the exposed individuals are grave, ranging from identity theft and banking fraud to scams, phishing, blackmailing, and even business espionage. The details that have been exposed are just too revealing, and mitigating the risks now is very complicated – if at all possible.

If you were using FBS, you should reset all your passwords, enable 2FA and monitor your bank account activity closely. more

Industrial Espionage Quote of the Week: Most In-Demand Career

"...companies are increasingly at risk from hacking and industrial espionage. Protecting data and defending corporate networks is poised to be one of the most in-demand careers of the future." — Doros Hadjizenonos, Regional sales manager at Fortinet  more

Iowa Passes New Electronic Surveillance Law

IA - New penalties for those found guilty of trespassing to set up electronic surveillance equipment on someone else's property to secretly capture images or video have passed in the House.  

Iowa legislators have been trying to enhance trespassing laws for nearly a decade in response to undercover operations in large-scale livestock operations. Republican Representative Jarad (JAIR-ud) Klein of Keota says the bill addresses somebody that has ill intentions and wants access to somewhere where they don't have a reason to be. 

Critics say the bill could be used to shield those who are mistreating animals or it could prevent reporting of unsafe working conditions in Iowa meatpacking plants. more

How Grandma Hears Everything...

 …and why your business should care. 

There is a new eavesdropping spy trick in town. You could get burned unless you know about it.

Let’s start with Grandma. She is hard of hearing. A while back the family gave her money to buy two new hearing aids. Nice. Now she has stopped saying, “WHAT!” all the time. She hears everything clearly. 

There is only one problem. She seems to  hear everyone’s conversations even when she is not in the room. Sometimes she is in her room with the door closed. 

It’s a mystery, but we’ll figure it out soon. more

Cars Know Your Location. A Spy Firm Wants to Sell It to the Military

• 15 billion car locations.
• Nearly any country on Earth.
‘The Ulysses Group’ is pitching a powerful surveillance technology to the U.S. government.

A surveillance contractor that has previously sold services to the U.S. military is advertising a product that it says can locate the real-time locations of specific cars in nearly any country on Earth. It says it does this by using data collected and sent by the cars and their components themselves, according to a document obtained by Motherboard.

"Ulysses can provide our clients with the ability to remotely geolocate vehicles in nearly every country except for North Korea and Cuba on a near real time basis," the document, written by contractor The Ulysses Group, reads. "Currently, we can access over 15 billion vehicle locations around the world every month," the document adds. more

Placed in my Grain of Salt file until I can verify.

Spy Tech: Listening May be the Key to Cloning Your Key Says Spikey

Physical locks are one of the most prevalent mechanisms for securing objects such as doors. While many of these locks are vulnerable to lock-picking, they are still widely used as lock-picking requires specific training with tailored instruments, and easily raises suspicion. 

In this paper, we propose SpiKey, a novel attack that significantly lowers the bar for an attacker as opposed to the lock-picking attack, by requiring only the use of a smartphone microphone to infer the shape of victim’s key, namely bittings (or cut depths) which form the secret of a key. 

When a victim inserts his/her key into the lock, the emitted sound is captured by the attacker’s microphone. SpiKey leverages the time difference between audible clicks to ultimately infer the bitting information, i.e., shape of the physical key.

As a proof-of-concept, we provide a simulation, based on real-world recordings, and demonstrate a significant reduction in search space from a pool of more than 330 thousand keys to three candidate keys for the most frequent case. more

Ion Mihai Pacepa, Key Cold War Defector, Dies at 92

A general in the Romanian intelligence service, he later revealed the corruption and cruelty behind his country’s Communist regime. He died of Covid-19.

Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa, a senior Romanian intelligence official and an adviser to his country’s president, Nicolae Ceaucescu, arrived in Bonn, West Germany, one day in June 1978 on a diplomatic mission. Mr. Ceaucescu had given him a message for the German chancellor — and orders to devise a plan to assassinate an American journalist who covered Romania.

An engineer who specialized in industrial espionage, Mr. Pacepa had no interest in murder. And so, he entered the U.S. Embassy and announced his intention to defect. When he landed at Andrews Air Force Base a few days later, he became one of the highest-ranking officials to flee the Soviet bloc during the Cold War.

Mr. Ceaucescu offered a $2 million reward for his death, and reportedly hired Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, a Venezuelan terrorist known as Carlos the Jackal, to find him. more

Poor Due Diligence Can Carry a Costly Bite

A failure to properly consider cyber security in M&A due diligence could be a ticking time bomb for companies, with undiscovered breaches leading to reputational damage and multimillion-dollar fines.

The warning from consulting giant Accenture comes as cyber security firm McAfee unveils an espionage campaign linked to a Chinese hacking group it said is targeting telcos in the US, Europe and south-east Asia. more

Cyber is only one M&A due diligence technical precaution to undertake.

Secret Recordings & a High Stakes Divorce

UK - A judge is overseeing a private divorce court hearing featuring a member of one of Britain's most famous business families and his estranged wife.

Sir Frederick Barclay, 86, and Lady Hiroko Barclay, 78, are both expected to give evidence at the virtual trial in the Family Division of the High Court...

The nephews - all sons of his twin brother David - allegedly made over 94 hours of secret recordings as part of what his lawyers have described as 'commercial espionage on a vast scale'. more | Some of the bugging video.

In Recent Spy News...

Spies may have been among those forced to work remotely by the coronavirus pandemic, say researchers from the Finnish Security and Intelligence Service Supo... According to Supo researcher Veli-Pekka Kivimäki, the number of online espionage targets has risen in part because of the increase in the number of people working remotely. more

The U.S. intelligence community concluded with “high confidence” that China didn’t attempt to change the outcome of the 2020 election, an assessment that contradicts repeated assertions by former President Donald Trump and his allies. more

Email-management provider Mimecast has confirmed that a network intrusion used to spy on its customers was conducted by the same advanced hackers responsible for the SolarWinds supply chain attack. more

Privacy-focussed search engine DuckDuckGo (DDG) called out Google for spying on users after the latter updated privacy labels on Apple’s App Store to show the type of data it collects from users. more

Iran has charged a French tourist with spying and “spreading propaganda against the system,” his lawyer said Monday, the latest in a series of cases against foreigners at a time of heightened tensions between Iran and the West. more

A 22-year-old Army personnel has been arrested on charges of spying and leaking confidential information to Pakistani agents. Akash Mehria, who hails from Sikar, was allegedly honey-trapped and was supplying information to woman Pakistani agents. more

Podcast studio Wondery has released the first audio trailer for Spy Affair, a new six-part miniseries. The show, which premieres March 30th on Apple Podcasts, investigates the true story of Russian gun advocate Maria Butina, who was convicted in 2018 of conspiring to act as a foreign agent within the United States. more

China to soon try 2 Canadians on spying charges... A Communist Party newspaper says China will soon begin trials for two Canadians arrested in apparent retaliation for Canada's detention of a senior executive for Chinese communications giant Huawei Technologies. more

How to Hire a Genuine Hacker For Cell Phone Spying Easily... Would you like to hire a genuine hacker for cell phone spying anonymously? All we know that finding real professional hackers on the internet is as difficult as finding water in the desert. We have come to highlight some of the special aspects of cell phone hacking to alleviate your suffering. more

In post-war Armenia, spy mania running amok... Two spy scandals involving well-regarded organizations speak to Armenians’ loss of faith in the international community, as well as the opposition’s interest in taking advantage of that mistrust. Our weekly Post-war Report. more

Google Jumps into Your Nest with its Own New Nest

Google has launched a new ‘Nest Hub’ home assistant that tracks its owners’ sleep.

It comes in a range of colors, and can be ordered today. Like the existing Nest Hub, it can show photos and videos from Google’s owner services like YouTube and Google Photos, integrates with other services such as Netflix, and can be used to control the home.

But its standout feature is its new sleep tracking technology. To use it, the Nest Hub is supposed to be placed on a bedside table, so that it can monitor its owners as they sleep. 

It can not only track the amount of sleep, and how deep it is, but also other things that might disturb that sleep – as well as other people sharing the bed – such as coughing and snoring. more

Interesting points...
• Google says the recorded audio and raw Soli data stays on the device and does not get sent to Google, though extrapolated sleep event data is sent to the company’s servers.
• Sleep Sensing (Google’s name for sleep tracking) is completely opt-in and can be disabled at any time.
• This will be a paid feature.
For some people this will be helpful and worth it. For others, it is AI creepy creep.
Hackers, on your mark! ...

A Hacker Got All My Texts for $16

A gaping flaw in SMS lets hackers take over phone numbers in minutes by simply paying a company to reroute text messages.

I didn't expect it to be that quick. While I was on a Google Hangouts call with a colleague, the hacker sent me screenshots of my Bumble and Postmates accounts, which he had broken into. Then he showed he had received texts that were meant for me that he had intercepted. Later he took over my WhatsApp account, too, and texted a friend pretending to be me. more

Information Security as a Service (ISaaS) - The Future of Information Security

Free-world businesses know they have a problem. They are bleeding their life-blood. Manufacturing was phlebotomized first. Bleeding now is their intellectual property and confidential information. What happens when these are gone?

We are watching a death of a thousand cuts, but it can be stopped. This paper examines how to do it... more

Security startup Verkada hack exposes 150,000 security cameras...

 ... in Tesla factories, jails, and more.

Verkada, a Silicon Valley security startup that provides cloud-based security camera services, has suffered a major security breach. Hackers gained access to over 150,000 of the company’s cameras, including cameras in Tesla factories and warehouses, Cloudflare offices, Equinox gyms, hospitals, jails, schools, police stations, and Verkada’s own offices, Bloomberg reports.

According to Tillie Kottmann, one of the members of the international hacker collective that breached the system, the hack was meant to show how commonplace the company’s security cameras are and how easily they’re able to be hacked. In addition to the live feeds, the group also claimed to have had access to the full video archive of all of Verkada’s customers... more