How Music Has Made Auditory Surveillance Possible

An interesting article on the history of electronic eavesdropping...
For as long as we’ve been able to transmit sound through the ether, it seems, someone has been listening in... more

FutureWatch: Eavesdropping on REALLY Tiny Sounds

Researchers have developed a microphone so sensitive it’s capable of picking up individual particles of sound.

OK, we knew light has particles, and gravity has particles. Now even sound has particles? Well, not quite. A phonon is what’s called a quasiparticle — basically, an emergent phenomenon that occurs when a microscopically complicated system behaves as if it were a particle...

 The quantum microphone consists of a series of supercooled nanomechanical resonators, so small that they are visible only through an electron microscope.

The resonators are connected to a superconducting circuit which contains electron pairs that move around without resistance. The circuit forms a qubit — a system that can exist in two states at once and has a natural frequency, which can be read electronically. more

Spycam Man Gets Life +150 Years — Skips on Castration

A workman accused of hiding cameras in several homes to spy on young girls was sentenced Wednesday to life in prison plus nearly 150 years by a judge who said she would have him castrated if the law allowed.

"We're here because of the choices that you and you alone made," Oklahoma County District Judge Amy Palumbo told Ryan Aaron Alden. "The devastation that you caused these families may never be known."

Alden, 39, of The Village, pleaded guilty in June to 28 felonies that included aggravated possession of obscene material involving minors, manufacturing child pornography and using video equipment in a clandestine manner.

Prosecutors alleged that Alden placed hidden cameras in the ceiling vents of four homes in Edmond, Nichols Hills and Oklahoma City. He reportedly placed the cameras in the bedrooms, bathrooms and closets of the homes while performing electrical work.

Alden was also accused of taking clandestine photos of girls in numerous public places, including gyms, schools, stores, mall changing rooms and a high school football game. more

Fighting Corporate Espionage — by a Counterintelligence Agent

Corporate executives must bear the responsibility... No longer is “Security” to the facility and personnel all that is required. Many foreign countries and interests take short cuts to becoming competitive through the theft of trade secrets, products and overt and covert espionage of all sorts...

Many of the tactics utilized in private sector counterintelligence have much in common with the secrets and information the government does its best to safeguard from theft... 

 There are open and legal methods of collection open that are harmful and a good counterintelligence program should target this as well as illegal activities such as electronic eavesdropping, hacking, etc.

Passive counterintelligence tries to curtail what a collector may do through countermeasures, and awareness training. Active counterintelligence will prove beneficial to identify and detect a threat, and will conduct operations including eliminating threats or ongoing targeting... The leaders in the private sector need to be proactive and realize that it is no longer only local threats they face. The threats can be global and may not only be an economic threat but also a threat to national security. more

The O.MG Cable™ — The Smartphone Electro-Leach

via Blue Blaze irregular C.G.

The O.MG Cable™ is the result of months of work that has resulted in a highly covert malicious USB cable. As soon as the cable is plugged in, it can be controlled through the wireless network interface that lives inside the cable.

 

The O.MG Cable allows new payloads to be created, saved, and transmitted entirely remotely. 

 

The cable is built with Red Teams in mind with features like additional boot payloads, no USB enumeration until payload execution, and the ability to forensically erase the firmware, which causes the cable to fall entirely back to an innocuous state. And these are just the features that have been revealed so far. more 

 

Their other "interesting" products of which you should be aware.

Wiretap Found at Office of Deputy Prosecutor General of Ukraine

Nazar Kholodnytsky

The Head of the SAPO* claimed a “device similar to a tapping device has been found”, adding that he did not know whom it belonged to...

Ukrainska Pravda wrote that the “bugs” had been planted on the acquiarium (sic) in Kholodnytsky’s office and reminded of rumors regarding the possible voluntary resignation “due to health reasons”.

Ukrainski Novyny, citing sources in the Prosecutor General’s Office, said that Kholodnytsky may be detained and arrested as the result of “the wiretapping case”.

Reacting to the resignation rumors, the SAPO head encouraged “not to count on it.” more

Extra Credit: Ukraine's Security Service denies allegations of wiretapping presidential candidates. more

*Ukraine's Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office

How to Drive Artificial Intelligence Surveillance Cameras Nuts

In order to deceive surveillance cameras, a fashion designer and hacker has developed a new clothing line that allows people camouflage themselves as a car in the recordings.

The garments are also covered with license plate images that trigger automated license plate readers, or ALPRs, to inject junk data into systems used to monitor and track civilians. more

Phone Phreaking - The Next Frontier - Elevator Eavesdropping

Next time you’re in an elevator, be advised that someone – besides building security and fellow elevator riders – might be listening.

 

A recent Wired article exposed the hidden world of elevator phreaking. By calling an unsecured elevator phone, a third party can expose a person, and potentially an enterprise, to a major security and privacy risk. 

 

Since elevator phones don’t require anyone to pick up the phone to open the circuit, a third party can make a call and be connected – allowing them to eavesdrop on conversations happening inside the elevator. 

 

Given the competitive nature of industries like banking and technology, it isn’t completely unthinkable for a hacker to eavesdrop this way. more

I know of a hotel in Miami which has bugged elevator—the one nearest the Boardroom; located on the Conference Floor level.

But, if bugged elevators aren't freaky enough, eavesdrop on elevators that talk! ~Kevin

Eye Spy

Spectacles are a camera that you wear on your face. Tap a record button near the temple, and they capture video in intervals of 10 seconds, which automatically uploads to the Snapchat app. The first two generations of the sunglasses, released in 2016 and 2018 respectively, were bulky, plastic, and multicolored—almost toylike.

Spectacles 3, to be released later this fall, are a much more appealing species. Sleeker, slimmer, and made in lightweight stainless steel, they signal the company’s move into elevated design. The style—exaggerated round lenses with a brow bar across the top—comes in just two minimal hues: matte black (the Carbon) and rose gold (the Mineral). more

The Peregrination of a Childhood Promise

Finally, another childhood fantasy becomes reality. Hard on the heals of wall screen TVs; Dick Tracy's wrist radio.

• The now iconic 2-way wrist radio premiered in 1946 and was replaced with a 2-way wrist TV in 1964.
• 1952 prototype wrist radio.
• 1960's wrist radio.
• Apple watch Walkie-Talkie.
• FutureWatch: A "Real" Dick Tracy wrist radio watch. (Bluetooth)
• Wrist radios on ebay.
• Wrist radios on Amazon.
• In June of 1954, the radio was upgraded to increase the range from 500 miles to 1,000 miles, then again in 1956 to 2,500 miles. 

Chester Gould’s idea of Tracy wearing something like this on his wrist in the comic strip was actually turned down by his employer because it was thought to be too much of a cheat, so-to-speak, an easy way out for the detective who had been written into a scene where he was held captive with no possible way of escaping from the criminals.

It was then that Gould decided to call an inventor he had met, Al Gross (pictured above).

Al Gross was a man way ahead of his time with inventions such as the walkie-talkie. When Gross was just 16 years old, he already had an amateur radio operator's license and had built a ham radio going on to invent the first telephone pager in 1949.

When Gould stopped by, Al Gross had just recently invented a two-way radio that people could wear on their wrists, just like a watch. Gould asked Gross if he could use his idea and that’s where Dick Tracy’s wrist watch radio came into being. Gould was so appreciative that as a Thank You, he gave Gross the first four panels of the cartoon where Tracy is seen wearing and using the soon-to-be infamous gadget. The device proved to be the exact answer for Dick Tracy to rescue himself from the seemingly impossible situation.

Still on my list...
  UPDATE - 8/27/19
Apple reportedly kills project to turn iPhone into 'walkie talkie'
Damn!

Ultrasound Talk Gives a Whole New Meaning to Defcon

Researchers have long known that commercial speakers are also physically able to emit frequencies outside of audible range for humans. At the Defcon security conference in Las Vegas on Sunday, one researcher is warning that this capability has the potential to be weaponized...

Matt Wixey, cybersecurity research lead at the technology consulting firm PWC UK, says that it’s surprisingly easy to write custom malware that can induce all sorts of embedded speakers to emit inaudible frequencies at high intensity, or blast out audible sounds at high volume.

Those aural barrages can potentially harm human hearing, cause tinnitus, or even possibly have psychological effects.

And while it is still unclear whether acoustic weapons played a role in the attack on United States diplomats in Cuba, there are certainly other devices that intentionally use loud or intense acoustic emanations as a deterrent weapon... more

Tesla Mod Creates a Mobile Surveillance Station - Possible Bad News for PIs on Surveillance

At the Defcon hacker conference today, security researcher Truman Kain debuted what he calls the Surveillance Detection Scout. The DIY computer fits into the middle console of a Tesla Model S or Model 3, plugs into its dashboard USB port, and turns the car's built-in cameras—the same dash and rearview cameras providing a 360-degree view used for Tesla's Autopilot and Sentry features—into a system that spots, tracks, and stores license plates and faces over time.

The tool uses open source image recognition software to automatically put an alert on the Tesla's display and the user's phone if it repeatedly sees the same license plate. When the car is parked, it can track nearby faces to see which ones repeatedly appear.

Kain says the intent is to offer a warning that someone might be preparing to steal the car, tamper with it, or break into the driver's nearby home. more

FutureWatch: Your Voice Can Give Away What You Look Like

Spying is multifaceted. It includes everything from plain old audio eavesdropping, to spycams (thus adding the visual element), to aggregating all the telltale data about us. Once science fiction, even facial recognition is coming to airports. Is it possible to squeeze more from a spy's cornucopia of tricks?

What if you want to know what a person is thinking, or what they look like?
These two challenges are the future of spying, and they are being worked on today.

We started covering mind reading advancements in 2006. And now, how to tell what a person looks like—and even their environment... just from the sound of their voice.

Warshipping - The Next Corporate Espionage Headache

Hackers looking to gain access to your Wi-Fi network don’t necessarily have to lurk around your home or office, warns IBM X-Force Red.

Instead, writes Charles Henderson, global head of that security unit, they could simply ship you a package with a tiny, concealed device they can remotely control.

“In fact, they could ship multiple devices to their target location thanks to low build cost,” Henderson writes. “The device, a 3G-enabled, remotely controlled system, can be tucked into the bottom of a packaging box or stuffed in a toy (a device no bigger than the palm of your hand) and delivered right into the hands or desk of an intended victim.”...

Scheduled TSCM inspections find electronic surveillance items like this. Dead or alive.

Such a device could even set up a rogue wireless network of its own to sniff login credentials to use on the real target network, according to the post. Devices made for the technique, which IBM has dubbed warshipping, can be built for under $100, the company says.

To avoid such attacks, Henderson’s team recommends companies set up policies to inspect and isolate packages and potentially discourage employees from getting personal shipments at work. more

How to Desensitize the World to Spying — Start Young

Barbie Spy Squad

(For children ages 4 to 6.)