Australia's diplomats have been targets of a cyber espionage attack strongly suspected to have originated from China.
According to an internal Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade briefing, a fake email was sent to a number of DFAT officers in the week beginning July 12, just over a week after the arrest in China of Rio Tinto executive Stern Hu.
DFAT insiders said the format and content of the email strongly suggested that it originated in China and was designed to collect intelligence from department computers. (more)
FutureWatch - Warfare (political and commercial) continues to morph, with human combatants being replaced by technobots. The enemies are stepping out of uniform ...and into obscurity.
"One never knows, do one?" opines Fats Waller. "The Shadow knows," smirks Lamont Cranston.
The Big Security Mistake... Focusing the security budget on hardware and personnel.
Today's losses are coming at you from the shadows. • Eavesdropping on your strategies. • Viewing your private moments. • Stealing your intellectual property.
FL - A nurse working at the assisted living facility Hawthorne House was arrested after she admitted to taking medication from the residents there.
According to her arrest report, Kimberly Shannon King, 27, had been taking prescription medicine from resident rooms for about two months. King was working each time medicine was taken, the report said. That’s when the administrators asked permission from one of the residents to install a covert video camera in his room to try and catch the thief in action.
One night, King entered the room and stole one and a half Oxycodone pills. King also stole the camera, so Hawthorne House administrators could not prove she was the culprit.
Administrators then installed a second camera in the same room.
When administrators watched the video, they saw King go to the drawer, remove a medicine bottle and take medication out of it. She placed the pills in her pocket, replaced the bottle and left the room, the report said. (more)
Ever wonder about municipal street cameras? What do they see? What about picture quality? Is anybody really watching them? Check herefor three fascinating videos.
Translation... Keystroke logging software may be inserted directly into some keyboards. A physical inspection won't find it. Reloading your system software won't destroy it.
"The security posture of a computer can be adversely affected by poorly-designed devices on its USB bus. Many modern embedded devices permit firmware to be upgraded in the field and the use of low-cost microcontrollers in these devices can make it difficult to perform the mathematical operations needed to verify a cryptographic signature. The security of many of these upgrade mechanisms is very much in question. For a concrete example, we describe how to tamper with a firmware upgrade to the Apple Aluminum Keyboard. We describe how an attacker can subvert an off-the-shelf keyboard by embedding into the firmware malicious code which allows a rootkit to survive a clean re-installation of the host operating system." K. Chen - Georgia Institute of Technology (more)
Some co-workers may have mole-like personal habits, but a true corporate mole is a dangerous animal. They burrow in, keep a low profile and eat profits buy selling intellectual property.
Why do they do it? Primarily money. They are on two payroll at the same time, and one of them may be very remunerative. A sense of power, adventure or righteousness are also motivating factors.
How does one learn how to be a corporate mole? There are many books, but one can also learn for free at ehow.com where you can learn "How to do just about everything."
P.S. You may also want to read their How to Spot a Corporate Mole tutorial which is missing... Step 8: Conduct electronic eavesdropping detection audits regularly. Moles are in the best position, and have the highest motivation, to plant electronic eavesdropping devices.
The U.S. Navy is preparing to shoot a faltering U.S. spy satellite out of the sky in the next two weeks using a tactical missile that was manufactured as a defensive weapon to head off enemy aircraft, the Pentagon announced.
While it's not uncommon for space junk to fall out of the sky, military officials said they are particularly concerned in this case because much of the 1,000 pounds of the frozen rocket fuel called hydrazine on the spacecraft could survive the descent and pose health risks, such as damage to skin and lung tissue, if it lands in a populated area. (more)
GA - A Chatsworth man has been arrested on eavesdropping charges that officials said include installing a video camera in his daughter’s bathroom.
Douglas Harrison Keith, 59, of 1253 Stafford Road in Chatsworth, was charged by the Murray County Sheriff’s Office with unlawful eavesdropping/surveillance with audio equipment and unlawful eavesdropping/surveillance with hidden video cameras (four counts).
“The eavesdropping warrant by audio regards a telephone conversation being recorded without the people on the phone being aware of it,” said District Attorney Kermit McManus. “According to Georgia law, at least one person must be aware (the conversation is being recorded).”
McManus said another eavesdropping charge came when a video camera was discovered in a bathroom used “solely” by his daughter, with the images being fed into an office where Keith had sole access. A spokesman with the sheriff’s office said the daughter discovered the camera in the bathroom. (more)
Spain - A scandal over alleged corruption and wiretaps in Spain heated up Tuesday as the opposition leader accused Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero of "persecuting" his party. (more)
The Palais de Tokyo's ongoing exhibition, Spy Numbers, takes as its starting point the mysterious and vaguely distressing Numbers Stations. These shortwave radio stations have been broadcasting for several decades, yet their precise function and origin are an enigma. Artificially generated voices are reading streams of numbers, words, letters, tunes or Morse code...
On the short waves of our radios, voices read out uninterrupted series of numbers. 2… 11… 58… 35… 23… Whether they are encrypted instructions intended for sleeping agents, messages exchanged between traffickers, or simple telephone settings, the “Spy Numbers Stations” have been broadcasting for several decades without their precise function becoming known.
HONG KONG -- Now that financial crime thriller “Overheard” has become the top Chinese-language film in China so far this summer, writer-director Alan Mak and Felix Chong are planning a follow-up that revolves around eavesdropping...
“It wouldn’t be a prequel that involves the same characters, as their lives before what happened in ‘Overheard’ wouldn’t be dramatic enough for a story,” Mak told the Hollywood Reporter. “But we think there’s a lot to be explored about bugging and eavesdropping, and are developing a script around this theme.” (more)
Synopsis for "Overheard" A major stock exchange in the world, Hong Kong attracts not only money but anyone who tries to manipulate the market. At the Hong Kong Police Force Commercial Crime Bureau, an operation is underway to infiltrate a trading company where a man nicknamed Boss is the chief suspect. The team, led by Inspector Leung (Lau Ching Wan) together with Yeung (Louis Koo) and Lam (Daniel Wu) installs bugs to monitor the communications. When crucial information on a surging share is intercepted, a moment of greed now puts them in a crossfire between the Bureau and the boss.
True security innovations don't show up every day. Locks are still locks. Alarms are still alarms. Models, designs and features change, but functions remain the same. You get the idea.
Here is truly innovative and useful idea... a system that can quickly account for employees during emergency situations (an OSHA requirement).
The system - 911HEADCOUNT - is a clever combination of technologies. The brains behind 911Headcount is Bo Mitchell, the Former Police Commissioner of Wilton, CT and a respected consultant in the private security industry.
from their Web site... "911 Headcount is the first and only automatic two-way, triple redundancy Mass Emergency Notification System that you can launch and manipulate on the run to account for employees, visitors and contractors in any emergency." • Background. • How it works.
Coming this Fall (in Japan)... The Un-Welcome Mat or, as we call it around here, Kevin's Home Alone Safety Zone Burglar Atone and Drop Zone Rat Mat. It is a giant sticky mat! Strategically place them at your portals when you leave. Stuck like a bug in a rug, your burglar will be playing Ultimate Twister instead of carting off your goodies. Just don't forget it's there when you come home. Look for it to be sold here.
Man-in-the-middle attacks tamper with video surveillance feeds, eavesdrop on IP video phone conversations
In one attack, researchers from Viper Lab showed how a criminal could tamper with an IP video surveillance system to cover up a crime by replacing the video with another benign clip. In another demo, they eavesdropped on a private IP video call. (more)
...it's sortalike shadowboxing with The Shadow. 
