What do a voice identifier, an automated translator, a "tamper-indicating" document tube, and a supersecure manhole cover have in common? They're all technologies for which the secretive National Security Agency (NSA) has been granted patents by the U.S. government, giving the agency the exclusive rights to its inventions.
The four technologies represent a tiny fraction of the more than 270 sleuthy devices, methods, and designs for which the nation's biggest intelligence agency has been granted a patent since 1979, the earliest year for which public figures are available. As the patent holder, the NSA can license the particular technology -- for a fee -- to anyone who wants to use it, so long as the patent hasn't expired.
The NSA's cryptologists and computer scientists have been busy over the years inventing methods of encrypting data, analyzing voice recordings, transferring digital files, and removing distortion from intercepted communications -- all things you'd expect from the world's largest and most sophisticated eavesdropping agency. And the digital spooks have patented gadgets straight out of a James Bond flick, such as tamper-indicating envelopes and finely tuned radio antennas. (more) (The List)
Cyber-security experts have dramatically called into question the safety and security of using USB to connect devices to computers.
Berlin-based researchers Karsten Nohl and Jakob Lell demonstrated how any USB device could be used to infect a computer without the user's knowledge.
The duo said there is no practical way to defend against the vulnerability.
The body responsible for the USB standard said manufacturers could build in extra security.
But Mr Nohl and Mr Lell said the technology was "critically flawed". (more with videos)
(June) A covert sex tape involving a senior executive and his Chinese lover was the trigger for a major investigation into corruption at British drugs giant GlaxoSmith-Kline...
The video of married Mark Reilly and his girlfriend was filmed by secret camera and emailed anonymously to board members of the pharmaceutical firm.
It led to an investigation that has rocked the £76billion company... (more)
(Yesterday) A British private investigator (PI) has been sentenced to two and a half years in jail by a Chinese court after becoming embroiled in a sex and whistleblowing scandal at the drug firm GlaxoSmithKline.
Peter Humphrey, 58, was also fined 200,000 yuan (£19,300), and his wife, Yu Yingzeng – a naturalised American citizen – was sentenced to two years and fined 150,000 yuan in the first case of its kind involving foreigners in China...
GSK had hired them to investigate why the company's then head of China operations, Mark Reilly, had been filmed surreptitiously having sex with his Chinese girlfriend in his guarded luxury home. (more)
Money Saving Spy Tips
1. No area you think is private is private until a competent TSCM team says so.
2. The "girlfriend" spy is an old trick.
3. Bugs, taps and spycams are old spy tricks. #3 used with #2 will cost you.
4. Executives: beware of #2, check for #3 frequently.
5. PIs, working in China has its risks.
6. Blackmail works, especially when state sponsored.
7. Proactive TSCM is far cheaper than a mess like this.
The FBI has taken a computer disk and internal Ford e-mails in a continuing investigation of a former employee who was fired in June after the company found recording devices she had hidden in a building on its Dearborn, Mich., world headquarters campus.
Ford fired Sharon Leach, 43, a mechanical staff engineer who worked at Ford for 16 years, in late June after company security personnel saw her leave and return to the same conference room on multiple occasions. She told them she was recording conference meetings using the bugs...
According to court records, the FBI seized eight listening devices from Ford headquarters on July 11. It earlier had seized more than two dozen items from Leach's Wyandotte, Mich., home weeks earlier, including bank statements, tax records, a buy.com shipping bag, a Post-It note with numbers and a key chain with keys labeled "do not duplicate." (more)
If your computer files have been (or will be) held for ransom by Cryptolocker, bookmark this site... https://decryptcryptolocker.com/.
FireEye and Fox-IT have partnered to provide free keys designed to unlock systems infected by CryptoLocker.
These folks will analyze one of your locked files and send you the decode key, FREE.
SketchFactor is a navigation app that shows the relative sketchiness of an area. It's focused on improving city exploration on foot. SketchFactor empowers users to report sketchy experiences, read sketchy incidents, and get directions to where they need to go in the least sketchy way possible.
What does sketchy mean?
Sketchy means a number of different things. To you, it may mean dangerous. To someone else, it may mean weird.
What can I report?
You can report any sketchy incident you see fit. (more)
FutureWatch: If this gains traction, like Yelp, it will become a whole lot more than just a personal app. Police, criminologists, city planners, security consultants, taxi cab companies and more will find use for the data this generates. Imagine a real-time SketchFactor overlay for Google maps.
“The top secret, government, political secrets, all that top secret stuff that you kind of think about spies, probably less than 10% of what they are trying to go after.”
FBI experts say that 90% of what they go after, is industrial and trade secret espionage, and the target: students and executives from companies traveling abroad carrying trade secrets from their research and development at universities and companies.. And it's highly sought after.
“Every company, your research and development, it’s your next product down the road, and if I can steal that information and beat you to the market it's going to be devastating for you as a company.” (more) (video)
Forty years ago this Friday, Richard Nixon became the first and only president of the United States to resign from office. He signed his resignation agreement, boarded a helicopter for San Clemente, Calif., and largely retreated into the shadows of history.
A decade later, he sat down with former White House aide Frank Gannon to share his own account of his final days in the Oval Office. Segments culled from those 30 hours of interviews were aired publicly just once, on CBS News. This week, The Richard Nixon Foundation and the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum are releasing a series of clips of those interviews in commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the resignation.
In the first installments of the video series entitled “A President Resigns,” the disgraced president recalls learning that the infamous tape that became known as “the smoking gun” had been released. The tape revealed that Nixon had been aware of the break-in at the Watergate, despite his repeated denials. (more)
Researchers at MIT, Microsoft, and Adobe have developed an algorithm that can reconstruct an audio signal by analyzing minute vibrations of objects depicted in video. In one set of experiments, they were able to recover intelligible speech from the vibrations of a potato-chip bag photographed from 15 feet away through soundproof glass.
In other experiments, they extracted useful audio signals from videos of aluminum foil, the surface of a glass of water, and even the leaves of a potted plant. The researchers will present their findings in a paper at this year’s Siggraph, the premier computer graphics conference.
“When sound hits an object, it causes the object to vibrate,” says Abe Davis, a graduate student in electrical engineering and computer science at MIT and first author on the new paper. “The motion of this vibration creates a very subtle visual signal that’s usually invisible to the naked eye. People didn’t realize that this information was there.” (more)
Despite the promise of Google's Movidius-equipped Project Tango, there are still no depth-sensing, SLR-stomping smartphones on the market. But Movidius thinks that could change soon, thanks to its brand new chip: the Myriad 2 vision processor unit (VPU).
"The Myriad 2 is going to provide more than 20x the power efficiency of the Myriad 1, and enable camera features that were not possible before in mobile devices," CEO Remi El-Ouazzane tells me. If you'll recall, Tango's original tech brought faster focus, improved depth of field, near-optical zooming and higher light sensitivity to smartphone cameras (and now, tablets).
It also let researchers scan a room in 3D to provide interior navigation, among other cool tricks. (more)
From a Security Scrapbook Blue Blaze Irregular...
So, letting uncleared persons into secure facilities just became even more stupid.
With new processing chips, surreptitious video recording becomes even more dangerous.
Movidius makes the chips. And Matterport makes the 3D modelling software. This is very cool but at the same time very disturbing. How many tradecraft applications will this have? Security managers should see, at least, the Matterport video.
It is well known that USB drives can be dangerous. Companies run strict screening policies and it has long been known that running unknown ‘exe’ files is a bad idea. But what if the threat was undetectable, unfixable and could be planted into any USB device be it a USB drive, keyboard, mouse, web camera, printer, even smartphone or tablet? Well this nightmare scenario just became reality.
The findings will be laid out in a presentation next week from security researchers Karsten Nohl and Jakob Lell who claim the security of USB devices is fundamentally broken. More to the point they said it has always been fundamentally broken, but the holes have only just been discovered.
BadUSB
To demonstrate this the researchers created malware called ‘BadUSB’. It can be installed on any USB device and take complete control over any PC to which it connects. This includes downloading and uploading files, tracking web history, adding infected software into installations and even controlling the keyboard so it can type commands.
“It can do whatever you can do with a keyboard, which is basically everything a computer does,” explains Nohl... (more)
The short-term solution to BadUSB isn’t a
technical patch so much as a fundamental change in how we use USB
gadgets. To avoid the attack, all you have to do is not connect your USB
device to computers you don’t own or don’t have good reason to
trust—and don’t plug untrusted USB devices into your own computer. ...or, treat USB sticks the same way you would hypodermic needles. (more)
A virus known as 'Andr/SlfMite-A' has been recently discovered that is spreading throughout the Android world through text messages (SMS)...
Andr/SlfMite-A virus sends SMSs, which includes a malicious link. If you unknowingly click on the embedded link within the SMS, then the virus easily get installed on your phone. Once the virus is downloaded onto your phone, it secretly sends text messages with malicious link to the first 20 contacts from your contact list.
These self-replicating 'worms' send SMSs to your contact list, thus playing with the trust that the receiver has in you. Just because the person from your contact thinks that the message is from you and hence is a genuine text message, they might just get tricked into clicking the link and unknowingly allow the virus to get installed onto their phone. (more)
VideoCleaner is FREE professional open-source video enhancement software. With VideoCleaner, you can brighten poorly lit scenes, increase detail clarity, correct the viewing perspective, reverse lens distortion, repairs VHS recordings, improve color contrast, isolate channels, and so much more.
VideoCleaner makes faint movements, distant traffic signal color changes, and small details obvious. You can annotate on-screen with text and highlighting, correct playback speed, provide sweeping or adjacent before-after views, and extract stills.
Being open-source means that you can customize VideoCleaner to fit your needs and delve deep into the science. Everything is free, even the support.
VideoCleaner is free without any purchase price, support or update fees. You are welcome to use VideoCleaner and its components for any legal purpose, personal or commercial, without any requirements or obligations beyond the open-source General Public License (GPL) of its components. You are free to redistribute this software in accordance with its associated GPL. (more)
Some of the engineers who used to help the Central Intelligence Agency solve problems have moved on to another challenge: determining the value of every conceivable investment in the world.
Five years ago, they started a company called Addepar, with the aim of providing clear and reliable information about the increasingly complex assets inside pensions, investment funds and family fortunes. In much the way spies diagram a communications network, Addepar filters and weighs the relationships among billions of dollars of holdings to figure out whether a portfolio is about to crash. (more)
IL - A judge has fined a Lincoln man $500 for bugging his 90-year-old mother’s phone.
Richard Stamler, 60, pleaded no contest to disturbing the peace last week, and Lancaster County District Judge Andrew Jacobsen fined him...
Stamler’s sister called police March 28, 2013, after she found a recording device in the basement of their mother’s home that had been connected to the phone line and set to record any time someone in the house picked up a phone.
She told police she recognized her brother’s voice reciting date information on the tape. He admitted to police he recorded calls on his mother's phone, but didn't think it was illegal. (more)
Was Nitin Gadkari's house bugged? The reported recovery of listening devices from Union Minister Gadkari's house has set tongues wagging in political circles, with Congress suggesting that this shows there is lack of trust among the NDA leaders. Even former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has demanded a probe into this matter.
However, this is not the first time that news of political leaders being snooped upon by their adversaries has surfaced in the media. Let's look back at some similar controversies from the past... (more)
When: 7/30/2014
From 5:00 PM until 7:00 PM
Where: Boston Bar Association
16 Beacon Street
Boston, Massachusetts
United States
Trade secret thefts, both domestic and international, cost U.S.
companies billions of dollars per year. Over 85 percent of trade secret
thefts involve employees and business partners. It is imperative to
put a trade secret protection program in place. The FBI will show you
why and how.
In a joint BBA/BPLA sponsored event, federal
enforcement specialists Carmine Nigro and Ted Distaso, Brian Moriarty of
Hamilton Brook Smith Reynolds, P.C., and Russell Beck of Beck Reed
Riden LLP discuss methods of trade secret theft and best practices in
theft prevention. (more) (register)
FYI - Just up the street from:
Cheers (pub)
84 Beacon St.
Boston, MA 02108
"Where everybody knows your name." (But that's another privacy issue.)
India - Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today said there should be an investigation into the report of bugging devices having been found in Union Minister Nitin Gadkari's residence and asked Government to explain the issue in Parliament.
"If Ministers' houses are bugged, then it is not a good omen. It should be investigated. How can it happen? it should be explained by the Government in the House," he told reporters at an Iftar get-together hosted by Congress President Sonia Gandhi
A media report has claimed that high power listening devices were found in the bed room at the 13 Teen Murti Lane residence here of Gadkari, the Road Transport and Highways Minister. (more)
Every year, industrial espionage costs German businesses around 11.8 billion euros ($16 billion), according to a survey released Monday by the German security firm Corporate Trust.
Every second company in Germany has faced attacks - whether successful or not - with more than three-quarters of those surveyed registering financial losses as a result.
Corporate Trust said the survey reflected answers from 6,767 companies, some 40 percent of which estimated the damage from espionage had cost them anywhere from 10,000 euros to 100,000 euros.
Twelve percent said they lost more than 100,000 euros, and 4.5 percent said they lost more than 1 million euros. (more)
You never know when malware will bite. Even browsing an online restaurant menu can download malicious code, put there by hackers.
Much has been said that Target’s hackers accessed the giant’s records via its heating and cooling system. They’ve even infiltrated thermostats and printers among the “Internet of Things”.
It doesn’t help that swarms of third parties are routinely given access to corporate systems. A company relies upon software to control all sorts of things like A/C, heating, billing, graphics, health insurance providers, to name a few. If just one of these systems can be busted into, the hacker can crack ‘em all...
One way to strengthen security seems too simple: Keep the networks for vending machines, heating and cooling, printers, etc., separate from the networks leading to H.R. data, credit card information and other critical information. Access to sensitive data should require super strong passwords and be set up with a set of security protocols that can detect suspicious activity. (more)
Researchers at the U.S. Army Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center are developing a pocket-sized aerial surveillance device for Soldiers and small units operating in challenging ground environments.
The Cargo Pocket Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance program, or CP-ISR, seeks to develop a mobile Soldier sensor to increase the situational awareness of dismounted Soldiers by providing real-time video surveillance of threat areas within their immediate operational environment.
While larger systems have been used to provide over-the-hill ISR capabilities on the battlefield for almost a decade, none of those delivers it directly to the squad level, where Soldiers need the ability to see around the corner or into the next room during combat missions. (more)
The functional difference between a diffuse wall and a mirror is well understood: one scatters back into all directions, and the other one preserves the directionality of reflected light.
The temporal structure of the light, however, is left intact by both: assuming simple surface reflection, photons that arrive first are reflected first. In this paper, we exploit this insight to recover objects outside the line of sight from second-order diffuse reflections, effectively turning walls into mirrors. (more)
UK - A man who hid his phone in a toilet with the intention of filming his colleagues has been cleared of three charges of voyeurism – after magistrates accepted he has an extreme phobia of diarrhea and vomit.
A psychologist was called in to explain how Thomas Clark's actions were not as perverse as was being claimed by prosecutors.
The 28-year-old, from Barry Close in Tilgate, told a court he was petrified someone using the unisex toilet at his workplace before him might have suffered a bout of diarrhea or been sick.
Between November 1, 2012, and June 5, 2013, Mr Clark's phone was found on three occasions hidden in the toilet, by women he worked with at an office in Southgate.
On one occasion it was found in a bin, on another in a newspaper and on the third occasion in an Argos catalog. (more)
Yo, Barry... check it out.
New Jersey's Supreme Court is proposing an exception to the law that keeps conversations between a husband and wife private...
The state's highest court sided with the appeals court that marital communication does not lose its privacy just because it's heard by wiretap. But the justices proposed that the Legislature create a crime-fraud exception when spouses are jointly involved in criminal activity. (more)
A former Ford engineer is being probed by the FBI after listening devices were found in meeting rooms at company offices.
Ford issued a statement saying that it "initiated an investigation of a now-former employee and requested the assistance of the FBI."
It also adds that Ford's offices were not searched by the agency. "Ford voluntarily provided the information and items requested in the search warrant. We continue to work in cooperation with the FBI on this joint investigation. As this is an ongoing investigation, we are not able to provide additional details." (more)
(Sharon) Leach admitted hiding the devices under tables to help her transcribe meetings, her lawyer said...
The devices were installed before meetings but could not be easily
removed, her lawyer said. The audio devices were left in the conference
rooms and unintentionally recorded other meetings.
In all, Leach gave Ford security eight Sansa recording devices, her
lawyer said. Those are the same devices listed on the FBI’s search
warrant on July 11. (more)
A renowned four-floor Old Town nightclub has been put up for sale after its parent companies plunged into administration.
Dozens of jobs are at risk while the future of Espionage – based inside India Buildings in Victoria Street – is thrashed out. (more)
Ever posted a picture of your cat online?
Unless your privacy settings avoid making APIs publicly available on sites like Flickr, Twitpic, Instagram or the like, there's a cat stalker who knows where your liddl' puddin' lives, and he's totally pwned your pussy by geolocating it.
Mundy, a data analyst, artist, and Associate Professor in the Department of Art at Florida State University, has been working on the data visualization project, which is called I Know Where Your Cat Lives.
It's a data experiment that takes advantage of a furry monolith: some 15 million images currently tagged with the word "cat" on public image hosting sites, with more being uploaded at a rate of thousands more per day.
Mundy isn't even particularly a cat person. He could just have easily called the project "I know where your kid sleeps". Creepy? Oh yeah - much worse than kitty-stalking creepy. That is, of course, the point of the project... (more) (The Map)
Tip: Go tighten up your privacy settings. Better yet, turn off geo-location when taking photos. Ultimate better, stop posting.
This is how bad things are getting...
"The NSA made me slather my face in make-up... I had slathered the paint on my face in order to hide from computers. The patterns in which I applied the paint were important: To the pixel-calculating machinations of facial recognition algorithms, they transformed my face into a mess of unremarkable pixels. In the computer’s vision, my face caused a momentary burst of confusion. That’s why the patterns are called computer vision dazzle (or CV dazzle). When it works, CV dazzle keeps facial-recognition algorithms from seeing a face...
...more unexpected was what CV dazzle taught me about the physical world. It reminded me of another tech experiment I’d undertaken:
My phone’s Reminders app can tie a message to a specific place, it triggers an alert tone every time a user comes within 500 feet. I’d tried tying these reminders to a different kind of location—the 176 embassies and diplomatic missions in Washington, D.C. Whenever I got within a couple hundred feet of one, my phone sent me a little ping: “Iceland.” “Thailand.” “Equitorial New Guinea.”...
...here is the essence of CV dazzle’s strangeness: The very thing that makes you invisible to computers makes you glaringly obvious to other humans." (more) (official site cvdazzle.com)
Blank Reg would have loved this.
Turkey’s political system appeared to be sinking deeper into crisis on Tuesday, as nearly 70 police officers, some of them senior, were arrested for illegally wiretapping the telephones of senior government figures, including the Prime Minster and the intelligence chief. At least 67 members of the country’s police force were arrested in raids that took place on Tuesday all over Turkey, while warrants have reportedly been issued for over 100 people.
Many of the arrestees were seen being taken away in handcuffs by security personnel, including two former heads of Istanbul police’s counter-terrorism unit. Hadi Salihoglu, Istanbul’s chief prosecutor, said in a written statement issued on Tuesday that the suspects were part of a criminal conspiracy that had wiretapped phones belonging to Turkeys’ Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, as well as Hakan Fidan, director of Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization, known as MİT.
Thousands of other phone lines had also been wiretapped, he added, belonging to journalists and government administrators, including judges and military officials. (more)
A South Park man is being held without bail after investigators say he murdered his mother and stepfather and then disposed of their bodies near the Duwamish River.
Longtime friends of Parenteau say the father of two had become increasingly more paranoid... "He thought they put something in his arm and were bugging his phone. He thought he was Jesus." (more)
Moral: The fear of privacy invasion is serious and deeply felt. When someone mentions it, take it seriously. It doesn't matter if it is real or imagined. It is real to them. Don't ignore the anguish. Try to help.
A "rogue" gynecologist who used tiny cameras to secretly record videos and photos of his patients has forced one of the world's top medical centers to pay $190 million to 8,000 women and girls.
Dr. Nikita Levy was fired after 25 years with the Johns Hopkins Health System in Baltimore in February 2013 after a female co-worker spotted the pen-like camera he wore around his neck and alerted authorities.
Levy committed suicide days later, as a federal investigation led to roughly 1,200 videos and 140 images stored on computers in his home... His suicide — by wrapping his head in a plastic bag with a hose connected to a helium tank — frustrated everyone who wanted to know his motives and see him face justice. (more)
According to a security researcher, undocumented services in iOS allow Apple -- and law enforcement -- to access the contents of any iOS device, including encrypted ones.
Forensic researcher Jonathan Zdziarski has outlined details of how a number of undocumented services in iOS are purportedly used to collect personal data by law enforcement and government agencies, according to ZDNet.
The services, which sport names like "lockdownd," "pcapd" and "mobile.file_relay," are allegedly used to bypass lock screens and collect data from iOS devices, and are accessible by USB and WiFi. (Zdziarski adds "maybe cellular" to that list as well.)
Zdziarski presented his findings at the HOPE/X (Hackers On Planet Earth) conference in New York, where he noted that while Apple has worked hard to make iOS secure against "typical attackers," the company has also ensured that it can "access data on end user devices on behalf of law enforcement. "The end result is that iOS has been made "more secure from everybody except Apple and the government." (more)
"...we got Snowden!"
Russian President Vladimir Putin is denying media reports that he will reopen a Soviet-era base in Cuba used to spy on the United States.
Putin said Thursday there are no plans to resume operations at the Lourdes signals intelligence facility near Havana, after Russian media first reported a day earlier that the two countries provisionally agreed to the deal last week. (more)
Russia is trying to reopen a Cold War-era spy base in Cuba.
During Russian President Vladimir Putin’s trip to Cuba earlier this month, Putin and Cuban officials reportedly reached a provisional agreement to reopen the signals intelligence facility in Lourdes, Cuba, south of Havana...
The Lourdes base was first opened in 1964 and was used to intercept communications in the U.S. and throughout the Western Hemisphere. Some estimate that as much as 50 percent of the radio-intercepted intelligence that the Soviet Union collected on the U.S. during the Cold War came from Lourdes. Putin closed the facility back in 2001, citing it as a “goodwill gesture” toward the U.S., which had long expressed concerns about the Russian spy station. However, many analysts believed the real reason behind the decision was the $200 million-a-year rent that Moscow was reportedly paying to Cuba to maintain the base.
According to The Guardian, “the Lourdes facility was the Soviet Union’s largest foreign base, a mere 155 miles from the U.S. coast. It employed up to 3,000 military and intelligence personnel to intercept a wide array of American telephone and radio communications.” (more)
mCouple is something you can download on your Android and iOS devices to keep track of your partners.
So if someone thinks their significant other is cheating on them or if they’re anxious about who their partner is talking to and where he/she is going... (You get the idea.) It works in a two-way fashion, so both the partners need to have it installed on their devices in order to take advantage of it...
...its key concept is that all the history from you device will be accessible on your partner’s device. This means, any call or message you get during your day will be accessible on your partner’s connected smartphone without any bounds.
The same applies for contact entries made by you as well. ...its GPS tracking attribute makes it possible to track every move your partner makes. Facebook hasn’t been kept out of mCouple’s purview as well, with partners having been given the option of viewing all the Facebook chats of their significant others. (more)
FutureWatch: An in-app purchase offer for the Instant Alibi upgrade feature :)
Manything is a free iOS app that lets you convert a spare iPod Touch, iPad, or iPhone into a video surveillance camera. The next part is up to you: either use a second device to view footage remotely and receive alerts and Cloud-saved clips based on motion activity, or simply track what's happening on the Manything Web app. Basically, it works like an IP camera without requiring a separate purchase.
Since Manything just launched an IFTTT channel, you can pair it with Belkin WeMo (or other compatible products) to create DIY home security hacks. Here's how to get started...
(more)
No online communication is for your eyes only in the age of Internet surveillance by government spy agencies. But a leaked British spy catalog has revealed a wide array of online tools designed to also control online communication by doing everything from hacking online polls to artificially boosting online traffic to a particular website.
The spy catalog information developed by the British spy agency GCHQ comes from documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, according to The Intercept. Such documents don't contain much in the way of technical information about how the online spy tools work, but they do reveal a colorful array of code names for methods aimed at both collecting information and manipulating online information seen on websites such as Facebook and YouTube. (more)
Ukraine has released audio from phone calls made between rebels and Russian officers after the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. You can listen to it here...
In one of the calls, a rebel is heard to say that “We have just shot down a plane.” A reminder, perhaps, that even if the content they carry is atrocious, there is a time and a place for wiretaps. (more)
500 BC: The Spartans of ancient Greece invented the Scytale to transport hidden messages. Scytales were long, slender rods typically wrapped in a thin strip of papyrus, leather, or parchment.
A message was written on the wrapping, and then the strip was unwound and passed on to a messenger. Only when it was rewound around a rod of the same diameter could the original message be deciphered. (more)
Facebook launched a new app on Thursday, but you can’t get it unless you’re famous. Seriously. Facebook mentions is a new tool that allows celebs to keep constant tabs on what you, your Aunt Helen, the dude who works at your coffee shop, and everyone else in the world are saying about them on Facebook all day in the form of a constantly updating RSS feed! (more)
Gadgets such as tracking devices and wiretapping bugs have been popular products on China's online shopping websites. Their popularity has not waned even after being declared illegal by the Chinese government, which has since begun shutting down businesses selling and using them, reports the Beijing News...
Most of the sellers in Zhongguancun, which has been dubbed "China's Silicon Valley," only offer the devices when clients ask. Some of them have stopped selling these devices after Chinese authorities banned producing and selling wiretapping devices and hidden cameras on May 1. Producing and selling these devices can be punishable by up to three years in jail. People using them can serve up to two years.
The law seems not to have deterred their sale, however. Over thousands of these devices are available on China's leading e-commerce website Taobao at prices ranging from hundreds to thousands of yuan. They are all advertised as "theft or lost item prevention" devices to avoid legal responsibilities. (more)
The use of drones for physical security is limited only by the imagination and battery life, says J. Patrick Murphy, president of LPT Security Consulting.
He envisions drones being used for security purposes in mall parking lots and at oil refineries and other big plants, at hospitals and schools.
Murphy recently had the opportunity to see what camera-mounted drones can offer. He was on an assignment for a Houston-based clinic/pharmaceutical chain, conducting a security assessment of their buildings. As part of that, he needed to do a light(ing) study.
“We went to the parking lot in one location and did a walk-around in the daytime,” Murphy told Security Director News.
Then, he contacted local drone manufacturer and pilot Michael Sclafani of West Fork Drones for a nighttime flyover.
“It just blew me away because of the functionality and maneuverability,” Murphy said of the flyover... With the drone, he was able to see which trees were blocking certain lights and the shadows that resulted. “That’s a story told that I probably would have missed otherwise,” he said. (more)
NJ - The woman says she left for work that morning but returned home an hour later after realizing she'd forgotten her cell phone. She says she noticed the attic door open, and an air vent cover and tools were laid out around her bedroom.
"I still don't think that it hit me because nothing was taken. The television was here, and the house wasn't ransacked," she said. So, she left her home on Mayfair Lane but called her husband, who told her to call police.
They arrived to find everything cleaned up but searched and reportedly found a camera in the bedroom inside a vent and one installed in a tiny hole drilled in the bathroom shower. She believes the suspect hid it and cleaned up when she left...
Police say further investigation led them just 100 feet away to a neighbor's house, where they arrested 36-year-old Nader Ibrahim. (more - with video)
MI - For the third time this year, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mark Schauer is accusing Republicans of attempting to spy on his campaign.
But this time, the suspected political subterfuge involves a high-tech hidden camera and a video memory disk that fell into the hands of Democrats.
And Republicans are defending their campaign snooping.
Schauer’s campaign and Oakland County Democrats recently came into possession of a tiny disk containing raw video footage of a young woman and man who secretly recorded a Schauer campaign fundraiser June 22 at a private home in Bloomfield Hills.
A spokesman for the Michigan Republican Party acknowledged Wednesday the state party sent staffers... to videotape Schauer and his running mate... (more)
via Techlicious...
If you’ve ever tried to cut the cable TV cord, then you know how difficult an experience it can be. Your cable company has customer retention specialists trained to do whatever it takes to keep you as a customer. Usually, this just means offering leaving customers better prices to entice them to stay. Usually.
Last week, AOL executive Ryan Block and his wife Veronica Belmont called up Comcast to close their account and switch to another cable provider. Their customer service rep would have none of it, however. After 10 minutes of unsuccessfully trying to end service via the worst customer service agent in the world, Belmont handed the phone over to Block, who had the foresight to start recording the conversation. (more)
REI is hosting a 3-day conference on securing corporate and private sector assets. September 9 through 11 at the REI Training Center, Algood, TN.
Too often, security is primarily focused on physical protection of property and personnel. However, the American Society for Industrial Security (ASIS) states that 70% of a corporations’ value is from intangible assets and its proprietary business operations.
REI has assembled a group of leading experts to cover several aspects of corporate and private sector technical security in today’s environment. (flyer and registration form)
I have attended many of REI's training sessions and related conferences. All have been very worthwhile. Guaranteed, you will learn things not taught elsewhere. This seminar seems especially worthwhile for security directors and security consultants. PS - They always provide great food.
In a study, most IT execs at critical infrastructure companies revealed that their organization was compromised in the last year, but only 28 percent of them said that security was a top priority across their enterprise.
Nearly 600 global IT and IT security execs across 13 countries were polled for the “Critical Infrastructure: Security Preparedness and Maturity” report, released Thursday. And of those respondents, 67 percent said they had dealt with at least one security compromise, leading to the loss of confidential information or disruption to operations, at their companies.
In an interview with SCMagazine.com, Dave Frymier, CISO of Unisys, found it concerning that so many respondents seemed to be knowledgeable of threats to their organizations, but that this awareness hadn't translated to a heightened focus on security. (more) (10 things "Idocracy" predicted that came true.)
Time to yank some of that IT "security" budget and put it back where it was doing some good - traditional information and intellectual property security measures. Call us.
Germany is considering going back to the trusty old typewriter to counter alleged spying by the U.S. government.
In an interview with the TV service Morgenmagazin, a politician in charge of a parliamentary inquiry into U.S. spying in Germany said that the government is seriously considering a low-tech solution to the ongoing espionage problem, according to the Guardian.
Asked "Are you considering typewriters?" by the interviewer, Christian Democrat politician Patrick Sensburg said: "As a matter of fact, we have – and not electronic models either." "Really?" the surprised interviewer checked. "Yes, no joke," Sensburg responded. (more)
Australia - The former head of the Queensland Police homicide squad is not ruling out reports that Allison Baden-Clay's coffin or flowers were bugged at her funeral in a bid to catch her killer.
Former real estate agent Gerard Baden-Clay was yesterday sentenced to life in prison after being found guilty of murdering his wife in 2012.
He reported her missing 10 days before her body was found on the bank of Kholo Creek in Brisbane.
Detective Superintendent Brian Wilkins, who headed the investigation into Allison's murder, told 612 ABC Brisbane's Steve Austin that police were immediately suspicious of Baden-Clay because his face was scratched and "things did not add up".
He also said "wide and varied strategies" were used to gather evidence. (more)
1. Free Cell Phone MicSpike™ with Carry Container
2. Free Anti-Spyware Kit for Smartphones
