Android Malware - Steals Personal Data, Then Covers its Tracks

A new variant of Android malware is making rounds in the Google Play store and it is bad news all around.

According to Trend Micro, a Trojan dubbed Xavier, which is embedded in more than 800 applications on Android’s app store, clandestinely steals and leaks personal data.

Mobile malware is not new to the Android platform, but Xavier is a little more clever. It downloads codes from a remote server, executes them, and uses a string encryption, Internet data encryption, emulator detection, and a self-protect mechanism to cover its tracks. more

Foscam Remote Control Video Cameras: Pull Plug for Now

A Chinese company warned Monday that some of its remote-controlled video cameras contain flaws that a security firm said could be used in cyber attacks and cyber espionage.

The notice sent by Foscam USA, a subsidiary of Foscam Intelligent Technology Co. Ltd. that sells internet-linked video cameras, said in an urgent notice that 12 models made by China-based Shenzhen Foscam contain security flaws.

The flaws could allow the cameras to be taken over and used in massive cyber strikes called distributed denial of service attacks.

"Foscam US has been notified of 18 security vulnerabilities that exist on cameras manufactured by Shenzhen Foscam which leave users vulnerable to hacks which allow attackers to remotely take-over cameras, live stream, download stored files, and even compromise other devices located on the local network," the company said.

The company urged users to disconnect the cameras from the internet until the security vulnerabilities can be patched. more

The hackability of these cameras was first reported here in 2013.

The models affected include the following:
C1
C1 Lite
C2
FI9800
FI9826P
FI9828P
FI9851P
FI9853EP
FI9901EP
FI9903P
FI9928P
R2

Ponder of the Week

Lawyers and manufacturers are also vulnerable to corporate espionage.  Months can go by before they even realize they've been hit. — Mandy Simpson, CEO, Cyber Toa

No Jail Time for Teacher who hid Camera in Washroom

Canada - A former Brantford-area teacher and school administrator was handed a conditional sentence Thursday for various voyeurism-related offences. 

Brent Hachborn will spend eight months under house arrest. He will also serve a two-year probation term.

Hachborn once worked as a teacher at James Hillier Public School in Brantford. After he moved to another school, a camera was discovered in the school’s staff washroom.

Investigators later learned that Hachborn used three different cameras in a rotation. They had been there for about a year before anybody noticed – containing dozens of videos and 1,300 photographs of adult men in total. more

Early Radio Head Gear

According to an August 1930 issue of Modern Mechanix, a Berlin engineer invented the hat, which allowed its wearer to “listen to the Sunday sermon while motoring or playing golf, get the stock market returns at the ball game, or get the benefit of the daily dozen while on the way to work by merely tuning in.”



This was not, however, the first radio hat. The technology appears to date back to the early 1920s; a Library of Congress photo taken “between 1921 and 1924” features a man with a radio hat similar to Pathetone Weekly’s. Ultimately, neither hat seems to have made much of a splash among the public—but a radio hat designed two decades later certainly did.

In 1949, a Brooklyn novelty store introduced what they called “The Man From Mars Radio Hat.” A flurry of articles promoting it followed, and as did a temporary buying frenzy.

In one article, LIFE Magazine called the Man From Mars Radio Hat “the latest and silliest contribution to listeners who feel compelled to hear everything on the air.” more

NSA’s Leaked Bugging Devices - Reverse Engineered

Radio hackers have reverse-engineered some of the wireless spying gadgets used by the US National Security Agency. Using documents leaked by Edward Snowden, researchers have built simple but effective tools that can be attached to parts of a computer to gather private information in a host of intrusive ways.

The NSA’s Advanced Network Technology catalogue was part of the avalanche of classified documents leaked by Snowden, a former agency contractor. The catalogue lists and pictures devices that agents can use to spy on a target’s computer or phone. The technologies include fake base stations for hijacking and monitoring cellphone calls and radio-equipped USB sticks that transmit a computer’s contents.

But the catalogue also lists a number of mysterious computer-implantable devices called “retro reflectors” that boast a number of different surreptitious skills, including listening in on ambient sounds and harvesting keystrokes and on-screen images. more

Defamation Lawsuit Filed over Methodist Hospital Phone Bugging Claims

A Houston Methodist doctor has filed a lawsuit against the hospital claiming he was demoted for raising concerns about recording of conversations on hospital phone lines.

According to the lawsuit, Dr. Eric Haufrect MD was removed as vice chairman of Methodist's obstetrics and gynecology department after he raised concerns that the hospital was illegally recording conversations between staff and patients.

Haufrect learned of the alleged phone bugging in October 2016 after a nurse said a technician working on her phone explained it to her, according to the lawsuit.



When he alerted hospital administrators to the recording, they said his department could not opt out of recordings, the suit alleges. Haufrect said he raised concerns to several different parties in the hospital about potential HIPAA violations, including CEO Dr. Robert Phillips. more

Which is most secure: HomePod, Echo, or Google Home

Apple's HomePod, Google Home and Amazon Echo all encrypt the voice recordings sent to their respective servers. But there are varying degrees of how they keep the data secret...

Echo
"The recordings are securely stored in the [Amazon Web Services] cloud and tied to your account to allow the service to be personalized for each user," an Amazon spokeswoman said in an email.

Google Home 
Similarly, Google Home collects data from your apps, your search and location history, and your voice commands, which are all tied to your Google account... If a government agency requests data from Google or Amazon from a voice assistant, they can point to accounts associated with the user...

Home Pod
With anonymized IDs, Apple's speakers have a much more compelling argument for not handing over data: They can't find it. In the game of hide and seek with your voice data, the advantage -- for now -- goes to Apple. more

Yellow Printer Dots Nail Spy Agency Leaker

‘Colour printers spy on you’: Barely visible yellow dots lead to arrest of Reality Winner, alleged NSA leaker.

According to Rob Graham, who writes for the blog Errata Security, the Intercept’s scanned images of the intelligence report contained tracking dots – small, barely visible yellow dots that show “exactly when and where documents, any document, is printed.” Nearly all modern color printers feature such tracking markers, which are used to identify a printer’s serial number and the date and time a page was printed. 

“Because the NSA logs all printing jobs on its printers, it can use this to match up precisely who printed the document,” Graham wrote. more

Long term readers of the Security Scrapbook already knew about this.
From 10 years ago... Is Your Printer Spying on You? Good!

When Your Stuff Spies on You

What do a doll, a popular set of headphones, and a sex toy have in common? All three items allegedly spied on consumers, creating legal trouble for their manufacturers.

In the case of We-Vibe, which sells remote-control vibrators, the company agreed to pay $3.75 million in March to settle a class-action suit alleging that it used its app to secretly collect information about how customers used its products. The audio company Bose, meanwhile, is being sued for surreptitiously compiling data—including users’ music-listening histories—from headphones.

For consumers, such incidents can be unnerving. Almost any Internet-connected device—not just phones and computers—can collect data. It’s one thing to know that Google is tracking your queries, but quite another to know that mundane personal possessions may be surveilling you too.

So what’s driving the spate of spying? more

Wartime Spies Who Used Knitting as an Espionage Tool

During World War I, a grandmother in Belgium knitted at her window, watching the passing trains. As one train chugged by, she made a bumpy stitch in the fabric with her two needles. Another passed, and she dropped a stitch from the fabric, making an intentional hole. Later, she would risk her life by handing the fabric to a soldier—a fellow spy in the Belgian resistance, working to defeat the occupying German force.

Whether women knitted codes into fabric or used stereotypes of knitting women as a cover, there’s a history between knitting and espionage. “Spies have been known to work code messages into knitting, embroidery, hooked rugs, etc,” according to the 1942 book A Guide to Codes and Signals. During wartime, where there were knitters, there were often spies; a pair of eyes, watching between the click of two needles. more

You Already Bugged Your Own House Years Ago

If you're unnerved at the prospect of an always-on mic in your home, then take a second to consider the ones that are already there... more

FutureWatch - Bugs That Know What You Are Up To

Modern day sensors have become so small and sophisticated that gathering the data from a single point has become easy. The difficult part involves figuring out what to do with the information. Lead researcher Gierad Laput... “The average user doesn’t care about a spectrogram of EMI emissions from their coffee maker,” he said. “They want to know when their coffee is brewed.”
Synthetic Sensors aren’t just limited to detecting one activity or device at a time. The suite of sensors allows it to detect a variety of inputs at once... more

This Week in Spycam News - Cautionary Tales for our Times

• Fired former London teacher pleads to 16 charges for secret videos shot in staff changeroom at school. more

• “Roger” is a security guard. He’s vague on the exact details, but his jobs afford him access to several rooftops in the downtown area of an unnamed city. One of these roofs has a view of a high-rise hotel across the street. The building’s windows are so high up that guests tend to feel safe leaving the curtains open. So, Roger climbs out onto a ledge on the roof, trains his handheld high-zoom camera on the uncovered windows, and hits record. Then, if he happens to catch an unsuspecting woman, especially a naked one, he posts the video on the Internet. more

• Deputies in Chester charged a man with voyeurism Sunday after receiving a report that he hid a cell phone in a teen girl’s bedroom that took footage of her as she left the shower naked, police said. more

Read more here: http://www.heraldonline.com/news/local/crime/article149267889.html#storylink=cpy

• A Kingston man has been charged by the Ontario Provincial Police in Quinte West after a woman reported a camera taking her picture. She had been in the changing area of a Trenton business when she noticed a camera taking a picture of her. At that time the OPP charged the accused with one count of voyeurism. more

• A man is charged with video recording a 16-year-old girl without her knowledge while she was in the shower, according to the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office. more

• An ex-finance director who hid spycams to secretly film almost 700 videos of colleagues has walked free from court. Mark Logan planted the cameras in digital clocks in a toilet at the Wheatley Group offices in Glasgow city centre. The shamed 48 year-old also carried out the crime while on business trips in Edinburgh and London. A sheriff heard how Logan could be seen in footage putting a device on the bedside table of one of his victims... The secret cameras had been hidden in a toilet. Logan was snared when bosses at Wheatley discovered three digital clocks which had recording equipment inside them. more

• Former Palm Beach Gardens High School's athletic director William Weed has turned in his resignation. Weed was arrested Monday after an investigation that started in February. A police report stated that he used a covert camera to obtain videos and images of a female juvenile. more

Businesses: Embarrassment, reputation damage and lawsuits are the end result of these incidents. Learn how to protect your employees, customers, visitors and yourself. more

North Korean Spy News

• In a nation as bizarre as North Korea is, it comes as no surprise that their broadcasting of secret spy codes over the airwaves would be equally as bizarre.

While no official explanation for North Korea’s coded broadcasts has been solidified, many believe that the seemingly random numbers and phrases are codes understood by North Korean spies living under the radar in South Korea. more numbers stations

• North Korean prosecutors Friday demanded the extradition of those they say plotted to assassinate leader Kim Jong Un, including South Korea's outgoing spy chief and unnamed "masterminds" in the US Central Intelligence Agency.

The demand comes a week after the North sensationally alleged it uncovered a US-South Korean plot to kill Kim with biochemical, radioactive or poisonous substances during a major event, such as a military parade. more