The Case of The Handyman Cam

A Kentucky man accused of installing a video camera in a family’s bathroom is now facing additional felony charges...41-year-old Ryan C. Lloyd was charged with video voyeurism...

Police say a family hired Lloyd to fix a light fixture. A few days later, the family discovered a camera with an SD card had been wired to the light fixture. Police found 87 recordings on the card, including two images of a naked juvenile and images of two partially nude adults. more

FutureWatch: Stingrays May Be Stung by Apple Cell Phone Patent

Apple has filed a patent application on a new method of encryption, which complicates obtaining of confidential information.

The patent describes a technology that will not allow any device to keep track of the IMSI (international mobile subscriber identifier)...

Innovation may interfere with the use of Stingray devices, which act as masts for mobile phones. These devices can track the location of users or even to listen to personal calls. They are also sometimes called IMSI catchers. more

FutureWatch: Cheaper Infrared Cameras

A new breakthrough by scientists with the University of Chicago, however, may one day lead to much more cost-effective infrared cameras—which in turn could enable infrared cameras for common consumer electronics like phones, as well as sensors to help autonomous cars see their surroundings more accurately.

They tweaked the quantum dots so that they had a formula to detect short-wave infrared and one for mid-wave infrared. Then they laid both together on top of a silicon wafer.

The resulting camera performs extremely well and is much easier to produce. "It's a very simple process," Tang said. "You take a beaker, inject a solution, inject a second solution, wait five to 10 minutes, and you have a new solution that can be easily fabricated into a functional device." more

The New 'Cone of Silence', or The Death of Acoustical Ducting

Boston University researchers, Xin Zhang, a professor at the College of Engineering, and Reza Ghaffarivardavagh, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, released a paper in Physical Review B demonstrating it's possible to silence noise using an open, ringlike structure, created to mathematically perfect specifications, for cutting out sounds while maintaining airflow.

"Today's sound barriers are literally thick heavy walls," says Ghaffarivardavagh. ...they are a clunky approach not well suited to situations where airflow is also critical...

They calculated the dimensions and specifications that the metamaterial would need to have in order to interfere with the transmitted sound waves, preventing sound—but not air—from being radiated through the open structure. The basic premise is that the metamaterial needs to be shaped in such a way that it sends incoming sounds back to where they came from, they say.

As a test case, they decided to create a structure that could silence sound from a loudspeaker. Based on their calculations, they modeled the physical dimensions that would most effectively silence noises... The metamaterial, ringing around the internal perimeter of the pipe's mouth, worked like a mute button. more

Corporate Security: Will Your "Secret" Status Hold Up in Court?

via Epstein Becker Green - Peter A. Steinmeyer
A federal judge in Chicago recently taught a painful lesson to an Illinois employer: even if information is sufficiently sensitive and valuable that it could qualify as a “trade secret,” it won’t unless the owner of the information took adequate steps to protect its secrecy. 

This doesn't qualify.

In a thorough opinion issued in the case, Abrasic 90 Inc., d/b/a CGW Camel Grinding Wheels, USA v. Weldcote Metals, Inc., Joseph O’Mera and Colleen Cervencik, U.S. District Judge John J. Tharp, Jr. of the Northern District of Illinois explained that “there are two basic elements to the analysis” of whether information qualifies as a “trade secret”:

(1) the information “must have been sufficiently secret to impart economic value because of its relative secrecy” and

(2) the owner “must have made reasonable efforts to maintain the secrecy of the information.” more

Contact a Technical Information Security Consultant if you are unsure about the "reasonable efforts" you should be taking.

FutureWatch: Invisible-Light-Powered Eavesdropping Devices

Wi-Charge uses safe infrared light to deliver power from a distance. Our products provide enough power to charge a phone across a room, to power smart devices and enable new experiences. With Wi-Charge, mobile and IoT devices appear to charge autonomously. New applications open for homes, offices, factories and public spaces.

Battery-powered devices are portable, but battery capacity limits functionality and the need to replace batteries degrades the user experience. Moving wired devices, routing or hiding the power cords is a pain. Wi-Charge delivers 100x the power budget of battery solutions. With Wi-Charge, you can have the convenience of wire-free portability with a power budget approaching to a wired solution. more

Lots of good uses, and possibly some evil ones. 
Thanks to another Canadian Blue Blaze Irregular for spotting this one!

Electronic Footprint Army Boots Discovered

Hamas-run security forces at the Kerem Shalom crossing in the Gaza Strip have seized a shipment of army boots outfitted with tracking devices, Turkey’s state-run news agency Anadolu reported on Saturday, citing a security source in the coastal enclave.

Hamas security forces were carrying out “a precise inspection of the tracking devices in order to… understand how they work,” the security source said. more

Looks like the same technology as shoplifting tags and card-keys. Clever.

Thanks to our Canadian Blue Blaze irregular for spotting this one!

Book - JUDGEMENT by Joe Finder - Fast-Paced Thriller with Technical Surveillance Overtones

Just Released

JUDGEMENT by Joe Finder
Excerpt...
"It was nothing more than a one-night stand. Juliana Brody, a judge in the Superior Court of Massachusetts, is rumored to be in consideration for the federal circuit, maybe someday the highest court in the land.

At a conference in a Chicago hotel, she meets a gentle, vulnerable man and has an unforgettable night with him—something she’d never done before. They part with an explicit understanding that this must never happen again.

But back home in Boston, Juliana realizes that this was no random encounter. The man from Chicago proves to have an integral role in a case she's presiding over—a sex-discrimination case that's received national attention. Juliana discovers that she's been entrapped, her night of infidelity captured on video.

Strings are being pulled in high places, a terrifying unfolding conspiracy that will turn her life upside down. But soon it becomes clear that personal humiliation, even the possible destruction of her career, are the least of her concerns, as her own life and the lives of her family are put in mortal jeopardy.

In the end, turning the tables on her adversaries will require her to be as ruthless as they are..."

Inside Information: Several Technical Surveillance Countermeasures practitioners (including myself) were consulted for plot twists and technical realism. New York Times bestselling author Joseph Finder does this kind of homework on all his novels. ~Kevin
more

Ultrasonic Microphone Jammers — Do They Really Work?

It’s a question I get asked occasionally when one of our clients sees one of these devices being advertised on the internet.

Who can blame them for asking? The ads claim they can stop microphones from working properly. Instant privacy from electronic eavesdroppers, and anyone who is attempting to record your conversations.

Finally, Kryptonite for microphones!?!? Wow, how does that work?

The ultrasonic microphone jammer explanation is really simple... more

FutureWatch: Smartphone Comes with Optical Spy Pen

Click to enlarge.

Electronic pen device having optical zoom – Patent # US 10,198,649 – Feb. 5, 2019

Abstract

The electric pen device includes an optical system including a lens and an image sensor configured to convert an image signal of light that has passed through the optical system to an electrical signal. The electric pen device includes a control board configured to interact with an electronic device and a communication module configured to communicate by wire or wirelessly with the electronic device, so that an image or a picture taken by a camera is confirmed and an optical zoom is controlled from the external electronic device. more

FutureWatch spy implications: Phone may be concealed in the pocket, backpack, or nearby desk drawer. Take high quality photos by aiming the top of the pen, pressing a button, and automatically transmitting the photo back to the phone. Pretty covert. No word about it transmitting audio, yet. Leaving phones outside of the conference room won't be enough. You'll have to check the pens, too. 

Need a spy pen camera you can actually buy today, or worry about being used to steal your secrets? Check here. ~Kevin

Thanks to our sharp-eyed Blue Blaze Irregular in the shadows of Pennsylvania for this.

Smart Light Bulbs May Not Be a Bright Idea

Your discarded smart lightbulbs reveal your wifi passwords, because they are stored in the clear.

Not to mention, someone replacing your bulb and getting the password that way.

Yes, I know, the spy might not program the replacement bulb to operate like the old one. Dead give-a-way, right? My bet is that you'll think the bulb just forgot it's settings, or not notice at all.

This hack was publicized here, and originally researched here, if you want to know more.

Thanks to our Blue Blaze Irregular from the Jersey shore for this one.

Business Espionage: The Case of the Broken Unbreakable Glass

In what sounds like a half-baked movie script about corporate espionage, an FBI sting conducted in collaboration with a specialized glass maker (and watched from a gelato stand by a reporter from Bloomberg) led investigators to a meeting at a burger joint in Vegas during CES... Akhan Semiconductor, reached out to potential customers regarding its recently developed Miraj Diamond Glass, a new take on the protective screens used in devices like smartphones that Akhan claims is six times stronger and ten times more scratch-resistant than Corning Gorilla Glass. Among Akhan’s potential clients was Huawei... more more sing-a-long

This Week in Technical Surveillance

Ukraine - Head of the election headquarters of the presidential candidate of Ukraine, leader of the Civil Position Party Anatoliy Hrytsenko, independent deputy, Viktor Chumak, has said that wiretapping devices were found in their headquarters, and therefore, called on other candidates to be vigilant. more

Israel - The Israel Police admitted on Tuesday that it eavesdropped on journalists’ telephone conversations with suspects, despite these conversations being protected by journalistic privilege. more

Australia - Australia is to establish a new sweeping anti-corruption regime which will be overseen by a national watchdog which will tackle both cheating and match-fixing in the Australian sports sector...  It would also have the power to conduct electronic surveillance of coaches, sports officials, and athletes and look for signs of suspected match-fixing... more

U.S. - A head custodian for the city's public school district was arrested after a female co-worker found a hidden camera that had recorded her using a restroom... Francisco Javier Lopez-Martinez, 59, was arrested...after an overnight police search... Lopez-Martinez was found hiding...police said he threatened suicide while holding a handgun...the gun was determined to be an air-soft weapon... A day earlier, a woman reported to police that she had discovered the camera while using a bathroom...she found footage of her and also a clip of, Lopez-Martinez, installing the camera. more

...and one for the birds...

New Zealand - In a technology that's been heralded as a breakthrough in conservation, a remote recording device is 'eavesdropping' on one of the rarest birds in New Zealand to monitor how they're adjusting after being released back into the wild. more

 

Facilities Manager Alert: Your Smart Building May Start Doing Dumb Things

Researchers at enterprise security vendor ForeScout have warned that malware specifically targeting smart buildings is an inevitable next step given the rapidly expanding attack surface that building automation systems expose.

The operational technology researchers at ForeScout should know: they created proof-of-concept malware that revealed smart building vulnerabilities every business should be concerned about.

...just yesterday, Tenable Research revealed it had discovered several zero-day vulnerabilities in a premises access control system used by Fortune 500 companies. Among the many attack scenarios these vulnerabilities could facilitate was 'unfettered access to the badge system database' which in turn meant an ability to create fraudulent access badges and disable building locks. more

Spybusters Tip #847: Stop Car Theft via Key Fob Signal Intercept

By simply wrapping your key FOB in aluminum foil you can prevent a thief from intercepting the signal. 

If you park your car outside at home then you might consider using a foil-lined container or placing your keys in a coffee can.

I’m going to start wrapping mine in aluminum foil when I travel and stay in a hotel. If you doubt that this issue is a serious threat then watch How Thieves Unlock A Car. more

A big thank you to our Blue Blaze Irregular ensconced in Illinois for alerting us to this tip. ~Kevin