The red phone that was NOT on the Hotline

Today, it's exactly 50 years ago that the famous Washington-Moscow Hotline became operational. Allthough this link has always been for written communications only, many people think there are red telephones on the Hotline, as this is often depicted in popular culture. One wide-spread image is from the article about the Hotline on the online encyclopedia Wikipedia. It shows a non-dial red telephone which is on display in the Jimmy Carter Library and...

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Researchers Grow Human Brains in a Lab

A team at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences has succeeded in growing miniature human brains...The team, led by Dr. Jürgen Knoblich, started by analyzing human stem cells – a cell type that has the capacity to change into any other type of cell found in the body. Specifically, the scientists were interested in discovering what growth conditions are required for such cells to differentiate into various types...

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Snapchat Not So Private and Secure

According to a "Snapchat Security Advisory" published by Australian researchers,Snapchat names, aliases and phone numbers can be discovered and harvested via the Snapchat Android and iOS API - even if the Snapchat account is private.Gibson Security discovered a range of disturbing security holes when it reverse-engineered the popular photo and video sharing app, including what it believes to be unsecure encryption practices (two encryption keys across...

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FutureWatch: On the Road to The Corporate State

Tech Companies and Government May Soon Go to War Over Surveillancevia Patrick Gray, wired.com...On the very day the media dropped detailed documents on the NSA’s X-Keyscore collection program, the Facebook engineering team published a blog post stating that all access to Facebook via apps and web browsers was now SSL encrypted. Given X-Keyscore was a program primarily designed to intercept unencrypted internet traffic, you could be forgiven for interpreting...

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Government and Business Team Up Against Espionage...

Germany - Faced with increasing rates of espionage attempts directed at companies, German government and business leaders have agreed on hammering out a joint protection strategy. Raising awareness is the first objective.The German government and business organizations agreed on Wednesday that domestic companies needed stronger protection from espionage and cyber crime. They signed a declaration on hammering out a joint defense strategy and pooling...

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Wiretapping Sparks Naked Protest

FEMEN activists shed clothes in front of Ukrainian embassy in Berlin...Ukraine based feminist movement group, FEMEN has said that they are moving their office out of Ukraine's capital, Kiev after their telephone calls were wiretapped. A day prior, the police had alleged that a cache of illegal weapons were discovered from their headquarters. The group is said to be moving out because of security concerns. The FEMEN group has said that the...

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Use of phone-tracking technology in shopping centers set to increase

Australia - We are used to cameras watching our every move, but what about having your phone tracked when you go to the shops or the CBD (Central Business District)?More and more shopping centers and councils around Australia are already doing it - working out where people are going and how they get there.  Photo: Companies can track phones by scanning for WiFi signals or by intercepting mobile phone network signals. (ABC...

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The 50th anniversary of the Washington-Moscow Hotline

(Updated: September 16, 2013)This Friday, August 30, it's exactly 50 years ago that a direct communication link between the United States and Russia became operational. This Washington-Moscow Hotline is one of the most famous top level communications systems in modern history. Many people think the Washington-Moscow Hotline uses red phone sets, but that's a myth. The Hotline never was a telephone line as it started with teletype terminals, later...

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Millions of Android Users Vulnerable to Security Threats, Say Feds

According to a new document obtained by Public Intelligence, the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) are increasingly aware of the threats its law enforcement users and officials face at a federal, state, and local level in using older versions of the Android mobile platform. According to the roll call release — marked as unclassified but "for official use only," and designed for police, fire, emergency medical services (EMS) and security personnel — upwards of 44 percent of Android users worldwide...

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Spybusters Tip #972 - Own a Foscam FI9821W Megapixel IP camera? There is a security update waiting for you!

As mentioned here before, many IP surveillance cameras are vulnerable to hack attacks by outsiders. This firmware update notice from Foscam addresses that. In order to properly secure your Foscam FI9821W Megapixel IP camera as well as prevent any potential hardware or software failures, it is highly imperative that you please update to the latest stable Firmware version. If you are experienced with configuring your IP cameras please follow...

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Snoop in the Soup - (You Can't Make This S--- Up)

Kenneth Enlow was arrested in July after Ambra Reynolds and her seven-year-old daughter noticed something moving in the septic tank beneath the toilet they were using at White Water Park in Sand Springs, Oklahoma. When Ms Reynolds took a closer look, she saw Enlow looking up at her from inside the toilet... Rescue crews pulled Enlow, who was covered in human waste, from the septic tank and cleaned him off with a fire hose. He pleaded guilty in Tulsa County District Court to a misdemeanor violation of Oklahoma's peeping Tom statute last Thursday....

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Your Boss Won't Stop Spying on You (Because It Works)

No one likes the idea of a workplace in which managers keep a constant eye on employees. Workers find it creepy, and it’s not as if ambitious managers clawed their way up the ladder just to snoop on their underlings all day. Still, much of the surveillance now takes place electronically—in theory, freeing bosses to focus on other matters while monitoring software keeps everyone in line. So office spying isn’t going away.A study published over the weekend by researchers suggests that electronic surveillance in the workplace is strikingly effective...

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NSA also has arrangements with foreign internet providers

(Updated: October 11, 2013)Last Tuesday, August 20, the Wall Street Journal came with a big story with new details about the NSA surveillance programs. The article claims that NSA has the capacity to reach roughly 75% of all US internet traffic that flows through domestic fiber-optic cables. However, this was strongly denied by the NSAThe 75% claim got a lot of attention, but most media apparently oversaw a section later on in the article, which...

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Boyfriend Tracker app Booted from Google Play

Yesterday the Associated Press reported that the Boyfriend Tracker app, which had seemed to take Brazil like an overbearing wildfire, was removed by Google from its app store with no explanation.Both the app’s massive popularity (AP estimates around 50,000 downloads in just two months) and its removal raise questions. The former, of course, speaks to a fundamental problem in the security of relationships in Brazil. To be fair, it is certain that...

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Homes Hacked Through Wireless Devices - There Really is a Boogeyman

Sleep tight......

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CEO Pleads Guilty to Wiretapping Charge

ID - Louis Kraml, the Chief Executive Officer of Bingham Memorial Hospital in Blackfoot, entered a plea of guilty today to a misdemeanor charge of stalking in the second degree...A Bingham County grand jury indicted Kraml, and former hospital Information Technology Department employees Jack York, Chris Behunin and Tyler Lassen, with various violations of the Idaho wiretap statute... According to the indictments, the defendants intercepted and recorded phone calls made by and to former hospital doctor Robert Rosin and his staff between June 2009...

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FutureWatch: Eavesdropping via Mind Reading

We continue to keep tabs on the next really big thing in eavesdropping - mind reading. Still way off in the future, advances are being made every year.  Here is the latest...By analyzing MRI images of the brain with an elegant mathematical model, it is possible to reconstruct thoughts more accurately than ever before. In this way, researchers from Radboud University Nijmegen have succeeded in determining which letter a test subject was looking...

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Laser Beam Eavesdropping - In the News Again

Since the 1970's, stories about laser listeners have periodically popped up in the news. The common thread is their magical ability to eavesdrop from far away using only an invisible beam of light. Fear mongering is the next element, closely followed by, "very expensive, only the government can buy one." The reporters are either clueless or haven't done any decent research. Their information sources have vested interests: like governments spreading...

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Spybusters Tip #948 - Android Device Manager Allows Remote Locate, Signal & Erase Security for Android Devices

Access the settings by opening the Google Settings app from your Android app drawer and tapping the option for Android Device Manager.From there you can choose whether to enable remote location or wiping. This lets you login to the Android Device Manager website and find your phone on a map, cause your device to ring so you can find it if it’s in your other pants pocket or lost in couch cushions, or perform a factory reset if the phone’s been lost...

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Last of the Nixon Tapes Go Online

Forty years after President Richard M. Nixon turned off his secret tape recorder, the federal government on Wednesday finally released the last of the historic recordings that have provided an unparalleled insight into the workings of one of the nation’s most dramatic presidencies...The 94 tapes released on Wednesday cover conversations from April 9 to July 12, 1973, after which the secret taping system was dismantled when a Nixon aide, Alexander...

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Do You Know Your NSA History? (Pop Quiz - no prize)

When was this published in The New York Times?"A Federal Court of Appeals recently ruled that the largest and most secretive intelligence agency of the United States, the National Security Agency, may lawfully intercept the overseas communications of Americans even if it has no reason to believe they are engaged in illegal activities. The ruling, which also allows summaries of these conversations to be sent to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, significantly broadens the already generous authority of the N.S.A. to keep track of American...

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Who Gets the Bill for Government Wiretaps?

Is a major telephone company issuing a surcharge to its customers for legal government wiretapping in what it's calling a "lawful interception recovery fee"? A Facebook post that went viral, which showed an apparent copy of an AT&T bill with a section reading "Lawful Interception Recovery Fee" under "Surcharges and Other Fees."Text that accompanied the post, attributed to a Facebook user Kallie Snyder, read: "I called and they said it's...

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Spy Drone Pisses Off Dr. Wee

KUALA LUMPUR - The two men, who allegedly spied on the home of MCA Youth chief Datuk Dr Wee Ka Siong (Deputy Minister of Education Malaysia) using a hexacopter, claimed that they were only testing the machine and not spying...Both men have denied that they are members of a political party...Dr Wee, when contacted, said the excuses given by the two men were ridiculous and urged police to investigate the matter further. “Why would a photographer from...

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IKEA Store Union's Covert Video Allowed

Canada - Two different panels of the BC Labor Relations Board have made findings in favor of a union’s covert video surveillance at the IKEA store in Richmond, BC. The store has operated behind a picket line since May 13. With over 300 unionized employees on the outside looking in, and only 27 who have decided to cross the picket line, most store operations have continued. The kids’ ballroom is closed, and the 600 seat cafeteria isn’t serving up Swedish meatballs (or anything else), but otherwise the store is open and sales are being made. ...

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Intel's IT Computer Network PanOptiCop - Code Name "SANTA"

Intel has created a Hadoop-based rig that analyses just about every network event in the company – four to six billion of them on business days - in close to real time so it can spot threats including industrial espionage.Intel officials declined to name the tool, saying it would not be "productive" to disclose its name, but said it was created by an 80-strong team of big data specialists working from its Israel offices and makes extensive use of Apache Hadoop. Ron Kasabian, Chipzilla's general manager of Big Data, said the tool was developed because...

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Some Stuff Around the House Which Might Be Spying on You

For Americans concerned about their privacy, the NSA data grabs are daunting, but what about the data grabs happening inside your own home, perpetrated not by the government, but by your coffee machine?Consider every appliance and every piece of home electronics that you own. Does it gather data about how you use it? Does it connect to the Internet? If so, it could be used to spy on you. Your mobile devices, your TV, and now various other types of...

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Spybusters Tip # 723 - Be Smart - Use a Dumb Phone to Thwart Spyware

Sometimes you just need a dumb phone that can't spy on you. inKlien Global's tiny phone6.5mm Ultra Thin AIEK M3 Cool Card Cell PhoneOne that can't hold spyware. One that can't GPS track you. One that can't bite you with Bluetooth. Dumb phones are not always easy to find.  Your local cell phone store wants you to buy smartphones with data plans. Your significant other isn't going to gift you a dumb phone. (A smartphone, maybe,...

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Before you snicker, review your spy service's history

The recent revelations by the whistleblower Edward Snowden were fascinating. But they - and all the reactions to them - had one enormous assumption at their heart. That the spies know what they are doing. It is a belief that has been central to much of the journalism about spying and spies over the past fifty years. That the anonymous figures in the intelligence world have a dark omniscience. That they know what's going on in ways that...

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The Latest Holiday Season Spy Toy Rolls Out... and records!

...from the seller..."The I Spy Tank uses all of the latest technology so that you are able to see what the I Spy Tank sees. With the Wi-Fi transmitter you are able to control the I Spy Tank with your iPhone, iPad or iPod. Because of the built in Live Streaming Video Camera you are able to have battles with other I Spy Tanks. Why not see what your friends and neighbors are up to from your very own arm chair while your I Spy Tank goes and finds...

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"Paranoia is our friend."

The quote is from a legend in the corporate counterespionage business.  The movie Paranoia - which opens today - is from a terrific novel written by Joe Finder. Joe is a stickler for accuracy and detail; part of the reason he is a New York Times bestselling author. If you want a peek under the skirt of business espionage see Paranoia this weekend. Sign up here to win an autographed copy of the book. Movie times."Privacy is a myth."#CHANGETHEG...

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FutureWatch: Powerless Bugs or Teslabestiola

Ambient Backscatter research is in its infancy. Imagine the possibilities.Technical espionage could see its biggest advancement since the transist...

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Man Bugs his Ex's Home for Over Three Years

UK - A woman has been left terrified in her home and was turned against her closest friends after her ex-partner bugged her house for three and a half years, a court has heard. The victim said she suspected her ex had planted a listening device in her Darlington home after he started talking about things which she did not believe he should know... The man, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, said he installed the device to check on his...

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Baby Cam Hackers Can See You, Hear You, and Talk to You... and Your Kids

A hacker was able to shout abuse at a two-year-old child by exploiting a vulnerability in a camera advertised as an ideal "baby monitor". ABC News revealed how a couple in Houston, Texas, heard a voice saying lewd comments coming from the camera, made by manufacturer Foscam. --> !---->!--Vulnerabilities in Foscam products were exposed in April, and the company issued an emergency fix. Foscam said it was unable to provide a statement at...

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