Dutch queen Beatrix' phone

The day before yesterday, queen Beatrix of the Netherlands announced that she will abdicate on April 30, when she will have been on the throne for exactly 33 years. Her efficient, professional and even perfectionist style is also reflected by the telephones which are in her office in the palace of Huis ten Bosch: a simple modern white phone from the Unifoon series: Queen Beatrix in her office at her last meeting with prime minister Mark RutteNotice...

Read More

Free Stuff Alert: Encryption / Compression Program

Sophos Free Encryptionreviewed by Matthew Nawrocki  Product Information: Title: Sophos Free EncryptionCompany: Sophos Ltd.Product URL: http://www.sophos.com/en-us/products/free-tools/sophos-free-encryption.aspxSupported OS: Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 7 and 8Price: FreeRating: 5 out of 5Bottom Line: Sophos delivers an excellent freeware utility for securing document files with sensitive data inside AES encrypted archives. The software is easy to...

Read More

Who's Watching Your Webcam

About this time last year I reported on hacking Internet-connected video security cameras. Now, let's watch another aspect of the problem, personal webcam spying... Depending upon how old you are, you will recognize this is a reoccurring theme in works of fiction...1998 - The Truman ShowThe film chronicles the life of a man who is initially unaware that he is living in a constructed reality television show, broadcast around the clock to billions...

Read More

FutureWatch: Dual Personality Smartphones

A persistent headache for IT administrators dealing with BYOD in the workplace is how to keep sensitive company data safe even as more and more employee-owned devices are allowed into the corporate network. Fujitsu Laboratories is working on a solution to the problem which its engineers hope to roll out some time this year. (mo...

Read More

Security Director Alert: Free Anti-Theft Tracking for PC & Phone

Prey, an open source, cross-platform anti-theft tracker that lets you keep track of all your devices easily in one place. Whatever your device, chances are Prey has you covered as there are installers available for Windows, Mac, Linux, Ubuntu, Android, and iOS.Prey is easy to use. First off, you download and install the right version for your hardware. Then, after you've created an account and got it set up the way you want, you can forget about...

Read More

Today in Telephone History

On Jan. 25, 1915, the inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell, inaugurated U.S. transcontinental telephone service. (more)By this time wiretapping was already over 50 years old. ~Ke...

Read More

Flip Phones Keep Japanese Wives from Flipping Out

Japanese philanderers know their weak spot: the smartphone. Afraid that girlfriends and wives will spot incoming calls from certain secret someones, Lotharios in Japan are sticking with Fujitsu's old "F-Series" flip phones, the Wall Street Journal reports. The so-called "infidelity phones" can easily be programmed to conceal calls and texts from particular contacts.Fujitsu has added similar privacy features to its new lineup. Like the F-Series,...

Read More

If a tree falls in the forest, and nobody hears it...

Trees in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest are being fitted with mobile phones in an attempt to tackle illegal logging and deforestation.Devices smaller than a pack of cards are being attached to the trees in protected areas to alert officials once they are cut down and the logs are transported. Location data is sent from sensors once the logs are within 20 miles of a mobile phone network to allow Brazil’s environment agency to stop the sale of illegal...

Read More

Audio Steganography - SkyDe, as in Skype Hide

Those awkward silences during phone calls can communicate a lot. Especially if you're sending hidden messages during them. Computer scientists at the Warsaw University of Technology have come up with a way to secretly send nearly 2000 bits of encrypted data per second during a typical Skype conversation by exploiting the peculiarities of how Skype packages up voice data. They reported their findings this week...First the researchers noted that...

Read More

Who Is Tracking You On-Line - Infographic

How do the digital detectives on the net snare you? This infographic makes the mysterious, fathomable...  See the full graphic here....

Read More

Need an "I'm not here" outfit to go with the Mysterian glasses?

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs or "drones") are fast becoming an ever-present eye in the sky, potentially granting governments greater strike and surveillance capabilities than even Orwell’s fictional Big Brother could hope to wield. In response, NYC artist Adam Harvey has created a series of garments which claim to reduce the effectiveness of UAVs.Harvey’s garments include an anti-drone hoodie and scarf, which are designed to block the thermal imaging...

Read More

The Mysterians and Question Mark...or viceversa?

Worried about all those security cameras tracking your every move? Try rocking one of these visors and enjoy anonymity once again.At least that's what Isao Echizen from Japan's National Institute of Informatics is trying to achieve with the Privacy Visor (PDF). Developed with Seiichi Gohshi of Kogakuin University, the visor has a near-infrared light source that messes up cameras but doesn't affect the wearer's vision, according to the institute....

Read More

Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and other Cold War Spy Toys

via one of our Blue Blazer irregulars... (thanks!)From Russian photoblog PhotoShtab.ru comes these great pictures of Cold War-era miniature gadgets that KGB spies and others used to monitor, smuggle, and kill (via RussiaEnglish).Seeing as we have just seen the new adaptation of John Le Carre's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, these photos are a another great reminder of how paranoid and insane that whole 'Cold War' period was. (many more gadgets)P.S. If...

Read More

The Israeli prime minister's red phone

Based upon popular culture, many people think both the US and Russian presidents have a red telephone on their desks, as part of the famous Hotline between both countries. In a previous article we showed that the Washington-Moscow Hotline is not even a telephone line, let alone there are red phones at both ends. But, as we can see in the picture below, the prime minister of Isreal does have a red phone on his desk: Israeli prime minister Benjamin...

Read More

Foreign and Economic Espionage Penalty Enhancement Act of 2012 vs. My Baloney Meter

On January 14, 2013, President Obama signed the Foreign and Economic Espionage Penalty Enhancement Act of 2012.The Act enhances the penalties for certain violations of the Economic Espionage Act. The purpose of the Act was to amend title 18, United States Code, to provide for increased penalties for foreign and economic espionage. Under the Act, the upper limit of penalties for individual offenses of Section 1831(a) are increased from $500,000...

Read More

Book: Britian's Brilliant Bugs Bomb Nazis

Historian Helen Fry, who has written a book called The M Room: Secret Listeners who bugged the Nazis., says the information gleaned by the eavesdropping of the German generals was vitally important to the war effort - so much so that it was given an unlimited budget by the government.Click to enlarge.She believes what was learned by the M room operations was as significant as the code-breaking work being done at Bletchley Park."British intelligence...

Read More

Man Sends His Computer Security Token to China...

...so he can outsource his job!A security audit of a US critical infrastructure company last year revealed that its star developer had outsourced his own job to a Chinese subcontractor and was spending all his work time playing around on the internet.  Verizon investigators found that he had hired a software consultancy in Shenyang to do his programming work for him, and had FedExed them his two-factor authentication token so they could log...

Read More

The Suspected Fly on the Wall was a Horse

 Not a horse-fly, a real horse.  My friend and colleague, Tim Johnson, relates the tail tale..."I was contacted to do a debugging sweep of a company executive area and an executive residence in a midwestern state. Having concluded the examination of the offices without finding anything I proceeded to the residence where I repeated the process. During the radio frequency examination I detected a radio frequency that I noted for...

Read More

What Happens When You Lose A Cell Phone?

Vodaphone wondered too...In The Lost Phone Experiment, Vodaphone planted 100 phones throughout the Netherlands, and tracked their fortunes via a web site.  They came up with some interesting data about how many are returned, where they traveled to, what they were used for, and by who. Open the site up using Chrome and hit "Translate" so you can read it in English. (more)Spoiler Alert: About 30% were returned to their owne...

Read More

Cautionary Tale - Unsafe Sex, USB Style

Critical control systems inside two US power generation facilities were found infected with computer malware, according to the US Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team.Both infections were spread by USB drives that were plugged into critical systems used to control power generation equipment, according to the organization's newsletter... (more) (reiteration time) - "If you are not sure where it has been, don't stick it in." ~...

Read More

Business Espionage: AMD v. Ex-employees

AMD has filed (and been granted) a request for immediate injunctive relief against multiple former employees that it alleges stole thousands of confidential documents. Named in the complaint are Robert Feldstein, Manoo Desai, Nicholas Kociuk, and Richard Hagen. All four left AMD to work at Nvidia in the past year.The loss of Feldstein was particularly noteworthy, as he’d been the head of AMD’s console initiatives for years. Feldstein was behind the...

Read More

One in Four Android Apps Pose "High Risk" to Security

Almost 25 percent of Android apps feature code that can access application permissions and cause security vulnerabilities, according to a new study by mobile security firm TrustGo.Of the 2.3m Android apps analysed by TrustGo in the fourth quarter of 2012, 511,000 were identified as high risk, defined as being able to make unauthorised payments, steal data or modify user settings. Not all of the apps are universally available. For example, just 10...

Read More

A White House staff phone

Earlier, we discussed some of the phones which are used by the US president in his Oval Office. Now we have a picture of a telephone set which was used by White House staff members, presumably in the years around 1990, during the presidency of George H.W. Bush:A White House staff phone from around 1990.(Click for a bigger version) This is a quite common corded telephone from the 900-series of AT&T. It has standard buttons for program, pause,...

Read More

Stingray - Clandestine Cellphone Tracking Tool - Fights On

The FBI calls it a “sensitive investigative technique” that it wants to keep secret. But newly released documents that shed light on the bureau’s use of a controversial cellphone tracking technology called the “Stingray” have prompted fresh questions over the legality of the spy tool.Functioning as a so-called “cell-site simulator,” the Stingray is a sophisticated portable surveillance device. The equipment is designed to send out a powerful signal...

Read More

Van Eck Grown Up - Time to look at eavesdropping on computer emissions again.

1985 - Van Eck phreaking is the process of eavesdropping on the contents of a CRT or LCD display by detecting its electromagnetic emissions. It is named after Dutch computer researcher Wim van Eck, who in 1985 published the first paper on it, including proof of concept.[1] Phreaking is the process of exploiting telephone networks, used here because of its connection to eavesdropping.2009 - A simple experiment showing how to intercept computer keyboard...

Read More

'Spy News from New York' shows off NYC

New York in stunning 360 degree detail — A photographer has created a stunning interactive image of New York, giving a detailed 360 degree tour of Manhattan.Click to enlarge.Sergey Semenov, a Russian, created the image by stitching together thousands of photographs of the city, taken during helicopter tours in 2011. The interactive graphic has also been "flattened" to create a detailed 2-D image, focused on Central Park and its surrounding skyscrapers....

Read More

Business Espionage Alert: China Now Blocking VPNs

The "Great Firewall of China," designed to prevent its citizens from accessing some overseas content, has apparently undergone an upgrade.And some observers say this may not only be an effort to stop citizens from reading or viewing Western information, but also to spy on international corporations doing business in the country who encrypt their internal communications... "A number of companies providing virtual private network (VPN) services...

Read More

"1984" Gets a New Look

via creativity-online.com...You can't judge a book by its cover, but there's no denying that a thoughtful, bold packaging can make all the difference when it comes to picking up a tome from a shelf.Penguin Press enlisted designer David Pearson to re-do the covers of five classic George Orwell novels. Among them is this standout cover for "1984," with both the title and the author's name "blacked out." In certain lights, you can see the title, however. It...

Read More

Investigative Journalist Finds Electronic Listening Device in Apartment

Ukraine - Lviv investigative journalist Taras Zozulinsky said he discovered an electronic listening device in his apartment on Jan. 6. He thinks it was planted because of his investigation into whether high-ranking police officers in Lviv Oblast are involved in the illicit drug trade."I didn't snitch on you. You snitched me!"Police say they have launched criminal proceedings regarding intentional obstruction of journalistic activities, but complain...

Read More

Book Review - A Cybercop's Guide to Internet Child Safety

I am reading Glen Klinkhart's book, "A Cybercop's Guide to Internet Child Safety." After reading only two chapters, it is clear that this is a must-have book for every parent. The book begins with an Author's introduction. It sets the tone, i.e. Glen Klinkhart has not written this book to make a buck, he is on a much larger mission, and has the experience-clout to accomplish it. You see, when he was 15, his older sister was...

Read More

From those wonderful folks who brought you Godzilla...

Two moments of security Zen, from Japan... SECOM's rentable private security drones."Flyzilla"andand... "Flee, puny humans. FLEE!"  (more)...

Read More

Larry Ellison's Sailing Team Gets Caught Spying - Pay $15,000 Fine

Larry Ellison's Oracle Team has been found guilty of spying on the Italian team by an international jury of sailing experts, reports Julia Prodis Sulek at the Mercury News. The penalty shouldn't hurt too much: they have to give up five days of practice and pay a $15,000 fine. That couch change for billionaire Ellison, one of the world's richest men with a net worth of about $41 billion, according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index.  (mo...

Read More

Spies & SpyCams at the Supermarket

Germany - A former store detective who worked at the German supermarket Aldi has revealed to news outlet Der Spiegel that in addition to looking out for shoplifters, Aldi wanted him to spy on store employees and install hidden cameras."I had to say if an employee was working too slowly, engaged in an affair and reveal other private details such as their financial situation," the anonymous source told Der Spiegel, according to Business Insider. But...

Read More

Computer Anti-Virus King Becomes a Spy?!?! ...you decide.

Remember John McAfee? ...the man who, just weeks ago, went on the run from Belize after his neighbor was found murdered, claiming that the police wanted to kill him and frame him for the murder. He fled to Guatamala,...arrived in the US shortly after, and now he’s pecking out his tell-all tale via his blog, where he describes himself as the head of his own private spy operation.According to the post he... purchased 75 laptops, loaded them with...

Read More

Trakdot - Smart Baggage Surveillance

Paranoid about your luggage? Did it make the plane? Did it make the wrong plane? Where is it now? In March, you may be able to pinpoint where your luggage is even before the airline!"Trakdot™ Luggage is constantly monitoring the cellular network to determine it's city location. When you fly, Trakdot™ Luggage knows and goes to sleep. Upon arriving at your destination, Trakdot™ Luggage wakes up and reports it's new location. Depending...

Read More

Apps for Investigators - Takes the legwork out of finding the most useful investigative tools

There are hundreds of thousands of apps out there, but only a select few are truly useful to the private investigator, private detective and law enforcement professional. You will find those apps at a new web site called Apps for Investigators. David Ziegler has done the legwork of testing and evaluating apps for iphones, Androids, Blackberrys and ipad and other tablets. The web site lists apps that save investigators time and money, and...

Read More

Released: SpyWarn - Android Smartphone Anti-Spyware App

SpyWarn™ the simple-to-use forensic evaluation tool, used to check Android cell phones for spyware. Its unique forensic methodology makes it impossible to miss active spyware. SpyWarn™ begins with a FREE diagnostic survey – like a private consultation with a forensic expert. Based on your answers, a vulnerability Threat Level for your phone is computed.If your Threat Level is low, there is little need to worry. Keep the app handy for future...

Read More

Security Director Alert - VoIP Phone Eavesdropping

Murray Associates warns clients that VoIP phones are inherently less secure than the older style phones. It is one reason they advise disconnecting phones in meeting rooms until they are needed. Ang Cui, through his extensive research, has moved this threat from theoretical to very real. For in-depth information we recommend viewing his presentation. (video)High-tech telephones common on many workplace desks in the U.S. can be hacked and...

Read More

Once upon a time... privacy was the norm.

via cnet.com...Obama extends government wireless (should be warrantless) wiretapping for another five years -- and the public reacts with a big yawn... "Never say die."...sound of silence greet(ed) the five-year extension of extraordinary spying powers handed to the National Security Agency. Even in an age when attention deficit disorder seems to be the default mode, this was something else. In the closing days of 2012, President Obama signed...

Read More

Private Spy Drone Prompts Criminal Indictments

TX - An anonymous individual or group’s private spy drone’s images have resulted in a criminal indictments for a US meat packing company. The images were taken nearly a year ago and received so much attention that authorities took notice and acted.The images were taken above an Oak Cliff, Texas-based meat packing company and revealed a large-scale release of pigs blood into a creek flowing into the Trinity river. The business, Columbia Packing Company,...

Read More