Phone and internet users should be worried about big commercial companies, rather than intelligence agencies obtaining and sharing their private data, Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) Director Sir Iain Lobban said in an interview with the Telegraph.
"Look, who has the info on you? It's the commercial companies, not us, who know everything – a massive sharing of data," Lobban was quoted as saying by the newspaper on Friday.
"The other day I bought a watch for my wife. Soon there were lots of pop-up watches advertising themselves on our computer, and she complained," the GCHQ director added. (more)
via Lauren Weinstein...
"Microsoft collects information about you, your devices, applications
and networks, and your use of those devices, applications and
networks. Examples of data we collect include your name, email
address, preferences and interests; browsing, search and file history;
phone call and SMS data; device configuration and sensor data; and
application usage."
"If you open a file, we may collect information about the file, the
application used to open the file, and how long it takes any use
[of]it for purposes such as improving performance, or [if you]enter
text, we may collect typed characters, we may collect typed characters
and use them for purposes such as improving autocomplete and spell
check features." (more)
"Such as" implies more than just two examples.
Federal officials announced the arrest of the maker of a popular smartphone app marketed as a tool for catching cheating spouses by eavesdropping on their calls and tracking their locations — a technology critics have dubbed “stalker apps.”
In the first prosecution of its kind, federal officials said that StealthGenie violated the law by offering the ability to secretly monitor phone calls and other communications in almost real time, something typically legal only for law enforcement. The arrest comes as the market for surveillance software has grown so big that Web sites rank such apps on their price, features and even customer service...
The chief executive of the company that makes StealthGenie, Hammad Akbar, 31, of Lahore, Pakistan, was arrested in Los Angeles on Saturday, according to a news release from the Justice Department...
Court filings suggest that Akbar has contended that any legal issues were limited to the users of SmartGenie, not its maker. “When the customer buys the product, they assume all responsibility,” he wrote in a 2011 e-mail, court filings show. “We do not need to describe the legal issues.”
Efforts to reach Akbar’s attorney, based in Los Angeles, were not successful. (more)
FutureWatch - Will he pull the "primarily useful" card from the deck? This is what many audio eavesdropping gadget manufacturers used in the past to evade the law.
"Hey, its a baby monitor."... that can hear through concrete walls.
...two independent security researchers, who
declined to name their employer, say that publicly releasing the USB
attack code will allow penetration testers to use the technique, all the
better to prove to their clients that USBs are nearly impossible to
secure in their current form. And they also argue that making a working
exploit available is the only way to pressure USB makers to change the
tiny devices’ fundamentally broken security scheme. (more)
Plenty of people dream about quitting their day job, buying that fixer-upper farmhouse, and opening a bed-and-breakfast. Those B&B owners seem so happy. Well, everything isn’t quite as idyllic as it seems. We got one set of innkeepers — “Bob and Emily” — to anonymously spill the beans on what really happens behind those perfectly painted shutters.
This week. Bob and Emliy reveal the sordid side of running an inn. Here are some things you probably don’t want to know the next time you check into that seemingly quaint country B&B. (more)
A Department of Justice proposal to amend Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure would make it easier for domestic law enforcement to hack into computers of people attempting to protect their anonymity on the Internet. The DOJ has explicitly stated that the amendment is not meant to give courts the power to issue warrants that authorize searches in foreign countries—but the practical reality of the underlying technology means doing so is almost unavoidable...
As for extraterritorial hacking, the DOJ commentary explicitly states that the proposal does not seek power to extend search authority beyond the United States:
- In light of the presumption against international extraterritorial application, and consistent with the existing language of Rule 41(b)(3), this amendment does not purport to authorize courts to issue warrants that authorize the search of electronic storage media located in a foreign country or countries. AUSA Mythili Raman, Letter to Committee.
Yet the commentary also articulates a standard of searches that “are within the United States or where the location of the electronic media is unknown....
The latter standard seems to be a significant loophole in the DOJ’s own formulation of the approach, particularly given the global nature of the Internet. For instance, over 85% of computers directly connecting to the Tor network are located outside the United States. (more)
Beijing authorities have initiated a ban on all secret surveillance equipment in the city amid increasing pressure from the central government to crack down on spying activities.
The decision was issued jointly by the city's Administration for Industry and Commerce, Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau and Beijing National Security Bureau, which added that purchases of these devices–such as surreptitious cameras installed in glasses or walking sticks to secretly record photos or videos of people in bathrooms and changing rooms–could lead to serious criminal liability...
Chinese media outlets reported that the majority of buyers are private detectives and investigators, debt collectors and lawyers looking to collect evidence for their cases. There have so far been 91 official investigations into illegal surveillance in Beijing this year. (more)
* Except their own, we presume.
The National Security Agency has some of the brightest minds... But a new chat program designed by a middle-school dropout in his spare time may turn out to be one of the best solutions to thwart those efforts...
John Brooks, who is just 22 and a self-taught coder who dropped out of school at 13, was always concerned about privacy and civil liberties. Four years ago he began work on a program for encrypted instant messaging that uses Tor hidden services for the protected transmission of communications. The program, which he dubbed Ricochet, began as a hobby. But by the time he finished, he had a full-fledged desktop client...
“Ricochet is idiot-proof and anonymous.” (more)
A team of researchers from Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley, has created prototype radio-on-a-chip communications devices that are powered by ambient radio waves. Comprising receiving and transmitting antennas and a central processor, the completely self-contained ant-sized devices are very cheap to manufacture, don't require batteries to run and could give the "Internet of Things" (IoT) a serious kick start.
(more)
Let's just call it "Spy Dust".
A Metasploit module has been developed to easily exploit a dangerous flaw in 75 percent of Android devices that allows attackers to hijack a users' open websites...
Tod Beardsley, a developer for the Metasploit security toolkit dubbed the "major" flaw a "privacy disaster".
"What this means is any arbitrary website - say, one controlled by a spammer or a spy - can peek into the contents of any other web page," Beardsley said.
"[If] you went to an attackers site while you had your web mail open in another window, the attacker could scrape your email data and see what your browser sees.
"Worse, he could snag a copy of your session cookie and hijack your session completely, and read and write web mail on your behalf." (more)
Solution: Use a Firefox or Chrome browser.
... unless you are using them.
The Pwn
Plug Academic Edition is the Industry’s First
Enterprise Penetration Testing Drop Box
- Wireless (802.11b/g/n) high gain Bluetooth & USB Ethernet
adapters
- Fully-automated NAC/802.1x/Radius bypass
- One-click EvilAP, stealth mode & passive recon
The Pwn Plug Academic Edition acts as a penetration testing drop
box that covers most of a full-scale pentesting engagement, from
physical-layer to application layer. The Pwn Plug Academic Edition
is controlled through a simple web-based administration and comes
preloaded with an array of penetration testing tools and Wireless,
Bluetooth, and USB Ethernet adapters.
The Pwn
Plug R3 is a next-generation penetration testing
device in a portable, shippable, “Plug-and-Pwn” form factor.
- Onboard high-gain 802.11a/b/g/n wireless
- Onboard Bluetooth
- External 4G/GSM cellular
- Greatly improved performance and reliability
The Pwn Plug R3 is a next-generation penetration testing device
in a portable, shippable, “Plug-and-Pwn” form factor. With onboard
high-gain 802.11a/b/g/n wireless, onboard Bluetooth, external
4G/GSM cellular, ruggedized case design, and greatly improved
performance and reliability, the Pwn Plug R3 is the enterprise
penetration tester’s dream tool.
The MiniPwner
The MiniPwner
is described as a penetration testing “drop box”. You (or maybe a
cleaner you’ve bribed) needs to plug it into an Ethernet plug in
the target’s building, and then you can slurp all the data out of
their network via a wifi link.
The penetration tester uses stealth or social engineering
techniques to plug the MiniPwner into an available network port.
(common locations include conference rooms, unoccupied
workstations, the back of IP Telephones, etc.)
Once it is plugged in, the penetration tester can log into the
MiniPwner and begin scanning and attacking the network. The MiniPwner can
simultaneously establish SSH tunnels through the target network,
and also allow the penetration tester to connect to the MiniPwner
via Wifi.
WiFi
Pineapple Mark V
Slightly larger than a smartphone the WiFi Pine-apple Mark V is
the “ultimate” cyber surveillance device. It uses an “intuitive”
web interface to enable hackers to break into a corporate’s IT
networks through its wifi connections. It costs $100.
USB Switchblade
The goal of the USB Switchblade is to silently recover information
from a target Windows 2000 or higher computer, including password
hashes, LSA secrets, IP information, etc.
A gadget that looks like a USB stick has a
program that swings into action when it’s inserted into the USB
drive and can then begin its naughty work without the user knowing
it by exploiting a flaw in USB autorun settings. How about
dropping it in the car park of your target’s offices, seeing if
someone will pick it up and plug it in to see what’s on it…
USB
8GB Flash Drive Cufflinks
The thing
about these is that the bad guy can carry a load of malware, ready
for use at any time. These go for less than $50. Easy to smuggle
in.
The
Rubber Ducky
The Rubber Ducky is becoming the “field-weapon of choice” for
cyber spies. It’s the size of a normal USB stick but when you plug
it in to a PC it pretends to be a keyboard and starts ‘typing’
away, possibly trying to break into systems or maybe stealing
passwords. If you get a few seconds alone with someone’s phone
you can get an adapter to plug it in and maybe hack that too. (The last five items courtesy of Financial News.)
MEMS gyroscopes found on modern smart phones are sufficiently sensitive to measure acoustic signals in the vicinity of the phone. The resulting signals contain only very low-frequency information (< 200 Hz). Nevertheless we show, using signal processing and machine learning, that this information is sufficient to identify speaker information and even parse speech.
Since iOS and Android require no special permissions to access the gyro, our results show that apps and active web content that cannot access the microphone can nevertheless eavesdrop on speech in the vicinity of the phone. (more)
Your information assets have never been more crucial, more valuable, or more at risk. This is why information security is becoming a crucial business priority in many organizations. Moreover, complying with (international) information standards and guidelines (such as the NIST Handbook, ISO 17799, CobiT, and ITIL Security Management) is becoming a hot issue worldwide.
This unique distance learning course provides you with vital information for developing or reviewing your information security management framework. The course will help you determine the levels of risk your organization is facing and the steps you will need to take to provide adequate protection.
The course will be of particular benefit to:
- CIOs, CISOs and anyone who has direct line responsibility for information security
- Business Continuity Planners, Asset Managers, Risk Managers
- Legal Advisors and Corporate Security Consultants
- Company Secretaries, Finance Directors and Auditors (more)
Soldiers from Israel's elite wire-tapping unit are refusing to spy on Palestinians in a rebuke to prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
More than 40 former soldiers and current army reservists have signed a letter refusing future service in the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) military intelligence wing, known as Unit 8200.
Unit 8200 is often compared to the United States National Security Agency. It uses sophisticated technology to monitor the lives of Palestinians, gathering information which is then used by Israel's military. It also carries out surveillance overseas. (more)
In a wide-ranging interview with Rolling Stone, Taylor Swift gets candid about her love life, her professional feuds and being very cautious about janitors and wiretapping.
1. She's pretty much always worried about privacy
Swift is acutely aware that people are out to invade her privacy. “There's someone whose entire job it is to figure out things that I don't want the world to see,” she told Rolling Stone. She's also paranoid about basically anyone she lets get too close... I have to stop myself from thinking about how many aspects of technology I don't understand.” (more)
Taylor, there are some nice professional privacy consultants who can help you.
T-Mobile US sued Huawei for corporate espionage, alleging that the vendor's employees illegally photographed and tried to steal parts of a robot it developed in its labs, called "Tappy," to test cell phones.
 |
| Tappy's Grandfather |
The lawsuit, filed last week in federal court in Seattle, claims that two Huawei employees gained illicit access to its lab in Bellevue, Wash., photographed the robotic arm, tried to smuggle parts of it out of the lab, and then tried to sneak back in after they were banned from the facility...
In 2012 and 2013, the suit claims, Huawei employees engaged in the subterfuge. At one point, the suit alleges, a Huawei engineer put one of the robot's simulated fingertips into his laptop bag. Huawei "ultimately admitted that its employees misappropriated parts and information about T-Mobile's robot," the suit says. (more)
...also charged with having guns in his home which he's not allowed to have based on his criminal history.
Last year at this time (9/29/13) subject was sentenced to probation for a term of seven years with the condition that he have no contact with minors, and a fine of $2000, for the offense of Corruption of Minors. (more)
Russia - The Defense Ministry has challenged reports that a Kobalt-M spy satellite reentered the Earth's atmosphere and burnt up over the U.S., potentially leaving Russian military intelligence photos lying in Colorado or Wyoming...
The satellite, launched from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome near Arkhangelsk on May 6, was not equipped to digitally transmit its photographs back to its handlers at Russia's military intelligence unit, the GRU. Instead, it was designed to drop its film in special canisters from space onto Russian territory.
Interfax reported Tuesday that the satellite may have been attempting to position itself to drop a canister back to Earth, when it moved into too low of an orbit — thereby falling back to earth over the U.S. It is possible that much of the satellite and its photos survived, and are now sitting somewhere in the U.S. midwest. (more)
Footage as it passed over Atyrau, Kazakhstan...
Namibia - A new crime trend has emerged in Windhoek, where confidential business information is stolen and sold to the victim’s competitors...
City Police Senior Superintendent Gerry Shikesho told Namibian Sun that so far three cases of theft of business secrets have been opened - one last month and two this month.
He explained that people are being sent to steal documentation that contains company strategies or business plans.
He said a Windhoek company had information stolen that was valued at N$300 000 ($27,242.00 USD). (more)
Note: In Namibia, that is a lot of money for a business to lose.
Not a fan of Google Glass’s ability to turn ordinary humans into invisibly recording surveillance cyborgs? Now you can create your own “glasshole-free zone.”
Berlin artist Julian Oliver has written a simple program called Glasshole.sh that detects any Glass device attempting to connect to a Wi-Fi network based on a unique character string that he says he’s found in the MAC addresses of Google’s augmented reality headsets.
Install Oliver’s program on a Raspberry Pi or Beaglebone mini-computer and plug it into a USB network antenna, and the gadget becomes a Google Glass detector, sniffing the local network for signs of Glass users.
When it detects Glass, it uses the program Aircrack-NG to impersonate the network and send a “deauthorization” command, cutting the headset’s Wi-Fi connection. It can also emit a beep to signal the Glass-wearer’s presence to anyone nearby. (more)
The son-in-law of the late President Richard Nixon gave a lesson during a visit to Syracuse Wednesday on the difference between Watergate and the New York Republican Party's recent bugging scandal. One tactic was legal. The other was not, said Ed Cox, the chairman of the New York State Republican Party and the husband of former first daughter Tricia Nixon...
It was exposed recently that Assembly Republicans, led by Oswego County's Assemblyman Will Barclay, had a private investigator put a GPS tracking device on a car driven by Assemblyman Edward Hennessey, D-Suffolk County to track his whereabouts.
They admitted to it in court...
Cox, who was in Syracuse Wednesday, said the two investigations are not the same.
First of all, Assembly Republicans admitted to bugging the car.
Secondly, it was legal, he said (although he admits he doesn't know any more about the law than what he's been told by a reporter.)
He talked about bugging the car as if it was the Republican Party's responsibility. He said it is part of the "self-policing, democratic process" for one party to investigate the other party's candidate before the election.
"Watergate was using illegal means - breaking and entering and illegal bugging - in order to find out what was legal political conversation. It's just the opposite," he said.
Cox said politics in New York is a competitive sport. "It ain't bean bag," he said...
What would he say if someone bugged his car?
Under the same circumstances, he said, "Sure that would be fine with me." (more)
TX - A state district judge has dismissed a lawsuit brought by Houston-based Schlumberger Ltd. against a former employee who had left the company for a vice president job at a rival oilfield services company, Baker Hughes Inc.
Schlumberger had accused former employee Humair Shaikh of allegedly stealing trade secrets, but the two parties have reached a settlement...
The initial lawsuit alleged that Shaikh had violated confidentiality and noncompete agreements by taking trade secrets on four different USB drives when he left. (more)
Business espionage goes undiscovered, ignored, swept under the carpet, and settled out of court all the time.
Espionage is difficult to stop without a real commitment to protection.
The common thread is that the stolen digital data often travels via USB memory sticks, and this is preventable. We can show you how.
A variant of the infamous banking trojan Zeus has gone beyond targeting financial accounts, instead striving to collect another type of sensitive business data: customer information.
The variant, known as Dyre, is a banking trojan that first came to light in June when security companies warned that the Zeus knockoff found a way to bypass Web encryption, known as secure sockets layer (SSL). At the time, it targeted some of the largest global banks, such as Bank of America, Citibank, Natwest, RBS, and Ulsterbank. A recent version of Dyre, however, has begun targeting Salesforce, a popular cloud service for storing customer information, according to analyses.
Other cloud services could just as easily be targeted, according to security firm Adallom. (more)
Sixty percent of the infected devices run Android.
Fifteen million mobile devices are infected with malware, and most of those run Android, according to a new report by Alcatel-Lucent's Kindsight Security Labs.
Researchers found that "increasingly applications are spying on device owners, stealing their personal information and pirating their data minutes, causing bill shock." Mobile spyware, in particular, is on the rise. Four of the 10 top threats are spyware, including SMSTracker, which allows the attacker to remotely track and monitor all calls, SMS/MMS messages, GPS locations, and browser histories of an Android device...
About sixty percent of the infected devices are Android smartphones. About 40 percent are Windows PCs connecting through mobile networks. Windows Mobile, iPhones, Blackberrys, and Symbian devices combine for less than 1 percent. (more)
A new prototype light detector uses graphene's light-absorbing properties to see in a broad band of light wavelengths that includes terahertz waves. These fall between the microwave and infrared bands, thereby making it possible to look just beneath the surface of opaque objects such as skin and plastic...
So where might such a detector be used? In security scanners, for example, it could identify concealed weapons without invading bodily privacy. It could also make medical imaging safer and more effective.
Other applications include chemical sensing, remote bomb detection, night vision goggles/cameras, high-altitude telecommunications, manufacturing quality control (as terahertz waves penetrate cardboard and plastic), preventing premature car rusting, and even 3D printing.
A paper describing the research was published recently in the journal Nature. (more) (Get the T-shirt)
I see TSCM applications, too. ~Kevin
As smartphone usage grows in the business, many users still don’t understand proper security practices. If not addressed, this problem could put their (and your company’s) sensitive data at risk. Learn how your users can better protect themselves from mobile security threats. (7 Tips) (7 more Tips, including one from us!)
via the Weinberger Law Group...
It’s a common situation we hear about when adultery (either actual or suspected) is involved in the demise of a marriage: one spouse decides to spy on the other. While in years past, snooping on a spouse usually entailed rifling through purses or pockets (or hiring a private investigator to catch cheaters in the act), in this day and age, spousal snooping more often involves hacking into email accounts and installing tracer apps on smartphones.
Beyond the moral issues any form of spying raises, are these high tech forms of snooping even legal?
As the law on “inter-spousal spying” stands right now, it depends on the type of snooping and spying you’re engaged in. According to the federal wiretapping laws and the New Jersey Wiretapping and Electronic Surveillance Control Act (N.J.S.A. 2A:156A), activities that may be illegal or constitute a violation of privacy include the following... (more)
Also... Learn how to protect yourself from high tech snooping (and learn when
spying can be considered stalking) at the Weinberger Law Group companion blog, Spying on Your Spouse During Divorce: How Far is Too Far?
Israel remotely detonated a spying device planted in south Lebanon, killing a member of the Lebanese militant Hezbollah in the explosion, the group said Friday.
Hezbollah Al-Manar TV said Hassan Ali Haidar was killed after army intelligence spotted a "strange device" in the village of Adloun. A jet detonated the device remotely after it was discovered, killing Haidar, it said.
The device was planted on the militant group's telecommunications network. (more)
When disclosures from National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden were first published by journalists, government officials in the United States insisted that US intelligence agencies do not engage in economic espionage. But, as the revelations continued to trickle out and expose the duplicity of this assertion, officials shifted to suggesting that any economic espionage is not done to benefit the bottom lines of US corporations.
Now, a copy of a secret 2009 report [PDF], the Quadrennial Intelligence Community Review, from the Office of Director for National Intelligence (ODNI), which is headed by James Clapper, has been published by The Intercept. It was provided by Snowden and shows “intelligence community” plans to acquire “proprietary information” from companies around the world and assess whether and how “findings would be useful to US industry.” (more)
Wouldn't we just be
ge, ge, ge, getting
our own secrets back? Hah!
...a neighbors' spying fears may sink young seadog's pirate ship.
UK - When his parents built a play pirate ship in his back garden, four-year-old Joseph Bailey was thrilled.
The wooden ship, crafted from recycled timber, became his pride and joy and the ‘labour of love’ was admired by everyone who saw it.
But then a neighbor complained to the council that Joseph was invading their privacy, claiming he could spy on them over the fence.
And despite his parents erecting a bamboo screen to solve any privacy issues, the 19ft by 8ft ship, complete with Jolly Roger, now faces demolition. (more)
P.S. The "pirate" doesn't appear to own a spyglass.
Embry-Riddle University -
The College of Security and Intelligence was kicked off last spring and the Doherty center was unveiled, but this fall marks the time when activities have begun in earnest.
The College of Security and Intelligence welcomed the first incoming students for the Masters program in Security and Intelligence Studies...
This semester, the college brought in more than 100 new incoming students in its different programs. The Cyber program will double in size, and just in time, the new Cyber Lab is taking shape next to the Eagle Operations Center. It will house 24 workstations, a rack of servers, and an area for forensics activities. (more)
KUWAIT - Customs inspectors at the Air Cargo section recently foiled an attempt by Kuwaitis to smuggle into the country sophisticated spying, eavesdropping and photography items, reports Al-Shahed daily. The confiscated items include cigarette lighters, pens and stationery. The cargo reportedly arrived from one of the Asian countries and the bill of lading listed the contents as stationery items. Police are investigating. (more)
A 98-year-old New Jersey woman convicted of conspiracy in the run-up to the atomic spy trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg has come back to a New York court to clear her name.
Miriam Moskowitz said after a brief court hearing Monday that she needs an official vindication that she was wrongly convicted in 1950. She was sentenced to two years in prison after she was convicted on a charge that she conspired with two men to lie to a grand jury investigating atomic espionage...
She filed the request two weeks ago, saying documents now prove the government withheld evidence that would have exonerated her. (more)
UAE - A 28-year-old woman sustained serious injuries after she was run over by her boyfriend’s car in Sharjah on Monday evening... A day before the incident, she said, she had a talk with him about their future, during which her boyfriend remained non committal. This prompted the woman to follow and spy on her boyfriend... She claimed that when she confronted him, he ran over her with his car twice. (more)
By Santiago A. Cueto
Industrial Espionage is the biggest threat to U.S. business interests. No other threat even comes close. It’s the fastest and least expensive way for our foreign competitors to bridge the innovation gap with the U.S. Using cutting-edge technology and age-old techniques of deceit and manipulation, corporate spies are the greatest post-cold war threat to international business.
Today’s international conflicts are not limited to nation to nation disputes. Increasingly, they include corporation versus corporation. (The 37 Tactics)
Citing an endless river of filth, vacuous conversations, idiotic Tweets and endless cat videos, the NSA announced it is “freaking done” with spying on Americans.
The NSA decision came only hours after thousands of analysts, following similar threats at CIA, said they planned to quit and apply for jobs as Apple Geniuses and Best Buy Geek Squad Support workers.
Speaking on background, one disgruntled NSA employee said “Go ahead, throw me in jail for an Espionage Act violation, that would be better than doing this job." (more)
In this penetrating work of investigative and historical journalism, Eamon Javers explores the dangerous and combustible power spies hold over international business.
Today's global economy has a dark underbelly: the world of corporate espionage. Using cutting-edge technology, age-old techniques of deceit and manipulation, and sheer talent, spies act as the hidden puppeteers of globalized businesses... Readers meet the spies who conduct surveillance operations, satellite analysts who peer down on corporate targets from the skies, veteran CIA officers who work for hedge funds, and even a Soviet military intelligence officer who now sells his services to American companies.
Intelligence companies and the spies they employ are setting up fake Web sites to elicit information, trailing individuals and mirroring travel itineraries, dumpster-diving in household and corporate trash, using ultrasophisticated satellite surveillance to spy on facilities, acting as impostors to take jobs within companies or to gain access to corporations, concocting elaborate schemes of fraud and deceit, and hacking e-mail and secure computer networks.
This globalized industry is not a recent phenomenon, but rather a continuation of a fascinating history. The story begins with Allan Pinkerton, the nation's first true "private eye," and extends through the annals of a rich history that includes tycoons and playboys, presidents and FBI operatives, CEOs and accountants, Cold War veterans and military personnel. (more)
The green metal file box was about the size and shape of an ammunition case.
It was scuffed and serious-looking and packed tight with personal letters and papers that had belonged to my grandfather, who died in 1989. The line in the family had always been that he “did intelligence work in Washington after the war.” This file box gave up a better story: My grandfather was an operations officer with the C.I.A. from January 1948 to August 1951. But that revelation brought up another question: Why only three years? (more)
FutureWatch: Teaser video suggests Dyson’s new vacuum cleaner may spy on you...
Cigarette giant British American Tobacco (BAT) could have its dirty linen aired in court following a sensational high court application launched by local "value brand" producer Carnilinx for alleged "corporate espionage".
In the application, Carnilinx director Kyle Phillips claimed BAT paid Pretoria attorney Belinda Walter for commercially sensitive information she obtained while "infiltrating " the company and the FairTrade Independent Tobacco Association (Fita) in 2012 and 2013. If this goes to trial, these spy claims could be extremely damaging for BAT, which is based in London and is the largest company listed on the JSE Securities Exchange, worth R1.26-trillion.
"BAT has used unlawful means to interfere in the business of the applicant. It has paid [Walter] monies to spy [on Carnilinx]," Mr Phillips claimed. (more)
Every company has information, business methods or techniques or a unique service delivery model that has competitive value worth protecting. Some information, processes and techniques may benefit from patent, trademark or copyright protection, but there is a much broader universe of your company's R&D, business analysis and process improvement that is potentially protectable as a trade secret.
The first step in securing that protection is to identify your trade secrets. Once trade secrets have been identified, you can then design documents and procedures to maximize the available protections and to preserve the value of your business.
Protectable trade secrets may be found in many aspects of your business. Common examples could include your marketing strategies, key analysis of your customers' purchasing habits and preferences, proprietary statistical models and the terms of your strategic alliances with business partners.
Less obvious, but no less important, examples could include an innovative risk management strategy, unique processes to continuously evaluate and improve the delivery of your products and services, or methodologies to assist in evaluating and responding to RFPs. (more)
Before you discuss all these things, make sure the room is not bugged. The folks at counterespionage.com can help.
An environmental group that stands accused of overstepping its inspection authority and trespassing across a Virginia farm also tried to have video cameras installed to monitor the property.
An officer of the Piedmont Environmental Council proposed that one of that group’s board members “runs a security company and could offer the use of security cameras to record visitors,” according to documents examined by The Daily Signal.
Documents obtained by The Daily Signal show the environmental group sought not only to monitor Liberty Farm through increasingly invasive inspections but also to install the video cameras to monitor visitors.
However, the Virginia Outdoors Foundation, a quasi-state agency created by the state legislature to preserve open space, would not go along. (more)
John Walker Jr., a former American sailor convicted during the Cold War
of leading a family spy ring for the Soviet Union, has died in a prison
hospital in North Carolina, officials said Friday. (more)
India - A lower-level functionary of the oil ministry, keen to deliver a copy of a file to a corporate (mole), made a fatal mistake while photocopying the paper: he forgot to remove the original document from the photocopier. This created a stir when an attendant spotted the paper while dusting the machine next morning.
The fate of the corporate mole is not clear but incidents such as these have resulted in the oil ministry moving rapidly to install surveillance cameras in sensitive locations to guard against espionage...
The surveillance system is intended to deter such moles or catch them red-handed. "The idea is to keep corporate lobbyists at bay. Cameras will be installed in sensitive locations of Shastri Bhawan," an oil ministry source said. (more)
A $30.00 toy with some interesting possibilities...
by Null Byte...
Now that nearly everyone and everyplace has a computer, you can use those remote computers for some good old "cloak and dagger" spying. No longer is spying something that only the CIA, NSA, KGB, and other intelligence agencies can do—you can learn to spy, too.
In this brand new series, we will explore how we can use the ubiquity of the computer to peek in on just about anyone and anyplace. Unlike the spy movies of yesteryear where the spy had to place a listening device in the lamp or in a houseplant, as long as there is a computer in the room, it can be used as a "bug."
We will examine how to turn that commonplace computer into our own bug to listen in on conversations, use as a spy camera, track Internet searches, and more. James Bond and Q have nothing on us!
In this first part, I will show you how to convert any computer, anywhere, into a listening device. As nearly every room now has a computer in it, you can put a bug in nearly every room, unnoticed and undetected. (more)
Tips:
• Don't open any Word or Excel files from anyone who might want to bug you.
• Reboot your computer often.
by Ralph Nader...
Here's a dirty little secret you won't see in the daily papers: Corporations conduct espionage against U.S. nonprofit organizations without fear of being brought to justice.
Yes, that means using a great array of spycraft and snoopery, including planned electronic surveillance, wiretapping, information warfare, infiltration, dumpster diving and so much more.
The evidence abounds.
For example, six years ago, based on extensive documentary evidence, James Ridgeway reported in Mother Jones on a major corporate espionage scheme by Dow Chemical focused on Greenpeace and other environmental and food activists...
This is hardly the only case of corporate espionage against nonprofits. Last year, my colleagues produced a report titled Spooky Business, which documented 27 sets of stories involving corporate espionage against nonprofits, activists and whistleblowers. Most of the stories occurred in the US, but some occurred in the UK, France and Ecuador. (more)
By Denny Hatch
Julian Assange (Wikileaks), Edward Snowden and Pfc. Chelsea (née Bradley) Manning became household names overnight.
They downloaded U.S. Government secrets. Diplomatic relations,
American politics and military secrets were seriously compromised.
How'd it happen? Up to 4 million people
—including 500,000 government contractors—hold Top Secret clearances.
That's how.
The Lions Gate Film Studios' $100 Million Theft
In late July at Lions Gate film studios, a perfect copy of the upcoming Sylvester Stallone movie, "Expendables 3," was stolen. The film cost an estimated $100 million to produce.
It was immediately offered free all over the Internet on such sites
as KickassTorrents, or KAT, and The Pirate Bay, or TPB, and a slew more.
Millions of co-conspirators downloaded the film for private viewing resulting in a box office catastrophe when it opened in theaters.
Reuters headline
August 11, 2014:
U.S. judge orders websites to stop 'Expendables 3' film piracy
Lotsa luck.
Takeaways to Consider
- In your organization, who has the equivalent of Top Secret clearance?
- Who has keys to your digital vault and access to the most sensitive R&D?
- Does a system exist whereby every time a major asset is in transit-not in its usual place-it can be tracked by user?
- Should you monitor employees' email to see who in your organization may be feeling underpaid or contemplating retribution?
- Two-thirds of companies monitor employees' Internet use and "almost 33 percent of 140 North American businesses nationwide conduct regular audits of outbound email content."
- Your future could depend on it.
Denny Hatch 's new book is "Write Everything Right!"
Drayton Bird writes, "Just had to say again how bloody good this is.
Who else could tell me in one book how to write a resume, which words
irritate people and how to review a film? (Sent from my iPhone)." Click here to download (Opens as a PDF) and read the first three chapters FREE. The title is also available on Kindle. Reach Denny at dennyhatch@yahoo.com.
from the website...
"We made CCALL because it’s a pain in the axx to enter conference codes from a mobile phone. If you've ever had a calendar invite with a long conference ID and scribbled it on the back of your hand to avoid jumping between the email, your calendar and your phone app then you understand why we did this."
Question: Do you think this a clever public service, or a clever social engineering eavesdropping / espionage trick? Doesn't matter. I know what I am telling my clients.
Spies hate iPhones...
The secrets of one of the world’s most prominent surveillance companies, Gamma Group, spilled onto the Internet last week, courtesy of an anonymous leaker who appears to have gained access to sensitive corporate documents. And while they provide illuminating details about the capabilities of Gamma’s many spy tools, perhaps the most surprising revelation is about something the company struggles to do: It can’t easily hack into your typical iPhone. (more)
