Private Investigator + Software Firm = Cell Phone Spyware Arrest

India - The Central Crime Branch (CCB) police arrested two persons, who allegedly used a software to collect confidential and personal data of cellphone users, for detective purposes...

The preliminary investigation has revealed that several mobile numbers of clients all over India have been snooped upon over the past year, the police said.

[The] firm was allegedly involved in using snooping software on Android and Blackberry based mobile phones. The firm was allegedly monitoring phone calls and messages of people, on behalf of their clients for detective purposes...

Once the software is installed and whenever user starts using the mobile, all data pertaining to his calls including conversation recordings / messages / e-mails, chats, picture and videos on the mobile phone would be automatically uploaded to a server hosted somewhere else using the target mobile phone’s GPRS data.

Even the exact geographical movements of the target in terms of latitude and longitude would be recorded and sent to the server in real time. The clients of detective agencies would be provided with a login username and password to view the data and movements of target’s mobile phone on a web browser and Google maps. (more)

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How a Slight Movement Can ID Your Smartphone

One afternoon, security researcher Hristo Bojinov placed his Galaxy Nexus phone face up on the table in a cramped Palo Alto conference room. Then he flipped it over and waited another beat. And that was it. In a matter of seconds, the device had given up its "fingerprints."

Code running on the website in the device's mobile browser measured the tiniest defects in the device's accelerometer — the sensor that tracks movement — producing a unique set of numbers that advertisers could exploit to identify and track most modern smartphones.

The accelerometer enables, among other things, the browser to shift from landscape to vertical as a user tilts the phone. It turns out every accelerometer is predictably imperfect, and slight differences in the readings can be used to produce a fingerprint. Marketers could use the ID the same way they use cookies — the small files that download from websites to desktops — to identify particular users, monitor their online actions and target ads accordingly.

It's a novel approach that raises a new set of privacy concerns: Users couldn't delete the ID like browser cookies, couldn't mask it by adjusting app privacy preferences — and wouldn't even know their device had been tagged. (more)

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Ankle Bracelets Have Criminals Bugged

Ankle bracelets featuring GPS tracking technology can do more than allow authorities to follow the whereabouts of criminals ordered to wear them. They also can be used to eavesdrop on conversations without the wearer knowing what’s going on.

In Puerto Rico, defense lawyer Fermín L. Arraiza-Navas learned about the bracelet’s expanded surveillance capabilities after meeting with clients fitted with the technology. He told the Puerto Rico Center for Investigative Reporting (CPIPR) that clients noticed the bracelets would vibrate when having conversations with lawyers and others.

One client said authorities spoke to him through a hidden phone feature included in the bracelets, which are manufactured by a Utah-based company, SecureAlert. (more)

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Court Rules: NO GPS for LEOs w/o CO

A federal appeals court has ruled that law enforcement officials must obtain a warrant before attaching a GPS unit to a suspect’s car and tracking them... 

“Today’s decision is a victory for all Americans because it ensures that the police cannot use powerful tracking technology without court supervision and a good reason to believe it will turn up evidence of wrongdoing,” American Civil Liberties Union attorney Catherine Crump said in a statement. “These protections are important because where people go reveals a great deal about them, from who their friends are, where they visit the doctor and where they choose to worship.”

The three-judge panel determined that installing GPS technology was a violation of the Fourth Amendment to the US constitution, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures. The judges’ final decision said the actions of the police were “highly disconcerting.” (more)

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Captain Crunch sez... "Here's looking at you, matey."

It’s not quite “Minority Report”-levels of creepiness, but it’s getting there.

He saw this coming.

Mondelez International, whose properties include Chips Ahoy, Nabisco, Ritz and other high-profile snack brands, says it’s planning to debut a grocery shelf in 2015 that comes equipped with sensors to determine the age and sex of passing customers.

The shelf, which is hooked up to Microsoft’s Kinect controller, will be able to use basic facial features like bone structure to build a profile of a potential snacker, Mondelez chief information officer Mark Dajani told the Wall Street Journal. While pictures of your actual face won’t be stored (yet), aggregate demographic data from thousands of transactions will be. (more)

I spy a tipping point. We are sailing into Fedup Bay. Watch the backlash, me hardies.

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Doc v. Doc Bugging Ends in House Call to Graybar Motel

India - Spying on his wife landed a qualified doctor husband behind bars on Saturday. 

Dr Gyaneshwar Maini, who owns a private hospital, was arrested for keeping a tab on the locations and conversations of his wife, while installing a high-quality Global Positioning System (GPS) along with a micro-mike packed in a black box in the steering wheel of her sedan car for the past eight months. 

The victim is also a qualified doctor and employed with a leading private hospital in Mohali.  

Police have also decided to take legal action against employees of a private firm, who installed the device in the car of the woman.

The GPS system, along with a mike, was in a black box worth Rs 18,000 ($293.76), which was detected with the help of an expert from a private company, which supplies these gadgets. 

The black box was linked with a 10-digit cell number used by Dr Maini's friend. Police said the installer of the device in the car has identified Dr Maini. In her complaint to the police, the woman suspected that there was some instrument in her car, which was keeping a tab on her movements and conversations, about which her husband would come to know even without her telling him. (more)

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Business Espionage - Top Businessman Bugs Other Top Businessman

Australia - When prominent Melbourne businessmen Grant Custance and David Morrell first crossed paths in 1975 as students at prestigious Geelong Grammar, neither could have foreseen that almost 40 years later they would be locked in a brutal feud involving police, lawyers, tracking devices and crisis management consultants.

The public stoush between the Toorak heavyweights, which dates to a business deal between the two in 2010 that landed Mr Custance in the Magistrates Court, has taken a new twist, with allegations Mr Custance paid for a private detective to shadow Mr Morrell and scrutinise his ''business practices and moral conduct''.
An electronic tracking device was fitted to Mr Morrell's luxury car in March last year, with other plans to ''manipulate and extract information from mobile phones, computers and listening devices'', according to a report prepared for Mr Custance by private investigator and former police officer Damian Marrett. The two-week surveillance was code-named Operation Bulldog and included extensive background checks, company searches and tailing Mr Morrell, who is a buyer's advocate with an extensive list of wealthy and powerful clients. (more)

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Forget the NSA. That Smartphone Snooper May Be Your Spouse

It's not just the National Security Agency spying on smartphones. Many ordinary people are also using sophisticated software to eavesdrop on the wireless communications of their lovers, children and business rivals.

According to a new study that examined the data traffic of mobile devices operating on the Middle Eastern network of a European carrier, hundreds of people had some form of surveillance software installed on their phones.

These aren't malicious apps that the users had been tricked into downloading. They're pieces of commercially available spyware that people with physical access to the devices have installed to secretly log each text message, phone call and contact, and in some cases, eavesdrop on calls in real time. (more)

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How NSA Breakthrough May Allow 'Burner' Phone Tracking

via Dan Goodin, Ars Technica 
In the HBO hit series The Wire, disposable cell phones were the bane of detectives' lives. Drug dealers obtained these prepaid "burners" in mass quantities with cash at multiple stores hundreds of miles away from where they were used.

After a week or two of use, a crook would destroy one cheap handset and fetch a new one. The Baltimore Police detectives' inability to tap the phones stymied their investigation into one of the city's most ruthless crime families — until they found a way to track the devices.

The National Security Agency may have made a similar breakthrough. Cato Institute researcher Julian Sanchez recently pulled a few sentences from a 2009 declaration by NSA Director Keith Alexander. They describe an unnamed tool that routinely accessed the vast database of call records assembled by the NSA. Sanchez argues that the purpose may be to identify burner phones used by NSA targets. (more) (via Schneier)

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Attorney & PI -- 75-100 Illegal Bugs and Surveillance Devices

CA - Mary Nolan, a family law attorney in San Ramon, California, pleaded guilty in federal court, to four counts of tax evasion and one count of unlawful interception of communications, announced United States Attorney Melinda Haag.

Nolan, 61, entered guilty pleas to all of the substantive counts in the indictment.... according to the plea agreement, Nolan caused her staff to illegally eavesdrop by accessing a listening device that private investigator Christopher Butler had installed in a vehicle used by “N.F” (a victim). Nolan agreed to resign her bar license and never to practice law again.

Butler, who pleaded guilty to unlawful interception and several other offenses on May 4, 2012, admitted having installed approximately seventy-five to one hundred unlawful listening devices at the request of clients or their attorneys, including the listening device in “N.F.’s” vehicle in August 2007. Butler was sentenced to 60 months’ imprisonment on this charge, to be served concurrently with the 96-month sentence on his other counts of conviction. (more)

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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 News: Simon Brown)

With the technology you do not get to opt in and you do not have to be connected to a WiFi network.

There are two different approaches to tracking the phones. The Inhouse Group system scans WiFi signals given off by smartphones to pinpoint a customer's location.

Another product from the UK - FootPath by Path Intelligence - intercepts mobile phone network signals.

Neither is able to access any content stored on your phone. (more)

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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 the app — called Rastreador de Namorados — would have just as much popularity elsewhere, but this one happened to be in a country famous for its casual liaisons. “In Brazil, we have this culture of switching partners really quickly, so this is a way of dealing with that,” the app’s maker, Matheus Grijo told the AP. “People really appreciate having a tool to help them find out whether they’re being cheated on.” (more) 

“Boyfriend Tracker” lets users obtain a call history, receive any incoming or outgoing text messages, identify a partner’s location on a map using GPS, and can turn on the phone to listen in to the surrounding environment. The app also lets users know when a phone is turned off or set to Airplane Mode. The app has to be downloaded on the intended individual phone, with their consent, according to Grijo. The individual can then text message codes to turn on the various tracking options. (more) (video)

Girlfriend Tracker app still available!
(No, just kidding.)

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Spy Cameras, Secret Audio Help Fight Movie Piracy

If all the sounds of the summer blockbuster "Man of Steel" were stripped away ...a light humming would still be heard. The barely audible noise is an audio watermark...

Designed by engineers at San Diego company Verance Corp., the watermark is a unique signal to Blu-ray disc players that the movie being watched was illegally recorded at a movie theater. After 20 minutes of playtime, the disc player shuts the movie down and offers the viewer the chance to continue watching—by paying for the movie through legitimate sources like Amazon.com Inc. and Netflix Inc.

...a San Diego startup, PirateEye, believes they can combat piracy using a vastly different technology.

The PirateEve camera, in theaters, can spot people recording a movie.
 
It installs cameras above theater screens that can detect recording devices in the audience and then send pictures of offenders to theater security.

PirateEye's camera-spotting technology was adapted from a military application that placed sensors under combat helicopters to scan the ground below for reflections from scopes on sniper rifles. 

Hollywood studios provided several million dollars in investment for the company, which has also been funded by private investors. (more)

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CreepyDOL - The sinister Espionage System for $57

Brendan O’Connor is a security researcher. How easy would it be, he recently wondered, to monitor the movement of everyone on the street – not by a government intelligence agency, but by a private citizen with a few hundred dollars to spare?

Mr. O’Connor, 27, bought some plastic boxes and stuffed them with a $25, credit-card size Raspberry Pi Model A computer and a few over-the-counter sensors, including Wi-Fi adapters. He connected each of those boxes to a command and control system, and he built a data visualization system to monitor what the sensors picked up: all the wireless traffic emitted by every nearby wireless device, including smartphones.

Each box cost $57. He produced 10 of them, and then he turned them on – to spy on himself. He could pick up the Web sites he browsed when he connected to a public Wi-Fi – say at a cafe – and he scooped up the unique identifier connected to his phone and iPad. Gobs of information traveled over the Internet in the clear, meaning they were entirely unencrypted and simple to scoop up.

Even when he didn’t connect to a Wi-Fi network, his sensors could track his location through Wi-Fi “pings.” His iPhone pinged the iMessage server to check for new messages. When he logged on to an unsecured Wi-Fi, it revealed what operating system he was using on what kind of device, and whether he was using Dropbox or went on a dating site or browsed for shoes on an e-commerce site. One site might leak his e-mail address, another his photo.

“It could be used for anything depending on how creepy you want to be,” he said.

You could spy on your ex-lover, by placing the sensor boxes near the places the person frequents, or your teenage child, or the residents of a particular neighborhood. You could keep tabs on people who gather at a certain house of worship or take part in a protest demonstration in a town square. Their phones and tablets, Mr. O’Connor argued, would surely leak some information about them – and certainly if they then connected to an unsecured Wi-Fi. The boxes are small enough to be tucked under a cafe table or dropped from a hobby drone. They can be scattered around a city and go unnoticed. (more) (Want your own CreepyDOL?)

Yet another thing a TSCM survey could uncover for you.

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Warrantless Cellphone Tracking Is Upheld

In a significant victory for law enforcement, a federal appeals court on Tuesday said that government authorities could extract historical location data directly from telecommunications carriers without a search warrant. 

The ruling is the first that squarely addresses the constitutionality of warrantless searches of the historical location data stored by cellphone service providers. (more)

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Russian Metro to Track Lost / Stolen Phones

(подталкивать, подтолкнуть, подмигивание)

A major Russian newspaper reported that Moscow’s metro system is planning what appears to be a mobile phone tracking device in its metro stations—ostensibly to search for stolen phones.

According to Izvestia (Google Translate), Andrey Mokhov, the operations chief of the Moscow Metro system’s police department, said that the system will have a range of five meters (16 feet). “If the [SIM] card is wanted, the system automatically creates a route of its movement and passes that information to the station attendant,” Mokhov said.

Many outside experts, both in and outside Russia, though, believe that what local authorities are actually deploying is a “stingray,” or “IMSI catcher”—a device that can fool a phone and SIM into reading from a fake mobile phone tower. (IMSI, or an International Mobile Subscriber Identity number, is a 15-digit unique number that sits on every SIM card.) Such devices can be used as a simple way to see what phone numbers are being used in a given area or even to intercept the audio of voice calls. (more)

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SIM Card Flaw Could Allow Eavesdropping on Phone Conversations

Vulnerability in the security key that protects the card could allow eavesdropping on phone conversations, fraudulent purchases, or impersonation of the handset's owner, a security researcher warns.

Karsten Nohl, founder of Security Research Labs in Berlin, told The New York Times that he has identified a flaw in SIM encryption technology that could allow an attacker to obtain a SIM card's digital key, the 56-digit sequence that allows modification of the card. The flaw, which may affect as many as 750 million mobile phones, could allow eavesdropping on phone conversations, fraudulent purchases, or impersonation of the handset's owner, Nohl warned. 

Can you decode the code?

"We can remotely install software on a handset that operates completely independently from your phone," warned Nohl, who said he managed the entire operation in less than two minutes using a standard PC. "We can spy on you. We know your encryption keys for calls. We can read your SMSs. More than just spying, we can steal data from the SIM card, your mobile identity, and charge to your account." (more)


The U.N.'s Geneva-based International Telecommunications Union, which has reviewed the research, described it as "hugely significant."

Cracking SIM cards has long been the Holy Grail of hackers because the tiny devices are located in phones and allow operators to identify and authenticate subscribers as they use networks. (more)
 

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Wi-Vi Sees Movement Behind Walls Using Cheap Wi-Fi Tech

A new system allows researchers to track up to three separate people through a wall, solely with the help of low-power Wi-Fi signals.

The Wi-Vi system relies on two antennas to broadcast Wi-Fi signals and a receiver to read them, according to the researchers’ paper. The Wi-Fi signals degrade in quality each time they pass through a wall, so the receiver must be prepared to pick up on very weak signals. It is also quickly overwhelmed if there are too many to sort through...

 
Researchers think the Wi-Vi system could also be used to find survivors in destroyed buildings or count and track criminals. Compared to previous military-oriented tracking systems, Wi-Vi is cheap, compact and lightweight, which makes it practical for consumer uses such as personal safety. (more)

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Quote of the Year - You Decide

Quote 1: "You are not even aware of what is possible. The extent of their capabilities is horrifying. We can plant bugs in machines. Once you go on the network, I can identify your machine. You will never be safe whatever protections you put in place."

Quote 2: "You can't come up against the world's most powerful intelligence agencies and not accept the risk. If they want to get you, over time they will." (more - with video interview) 

From an interview with Edward Snowden, self-confessed Intelligence Community whistle-blower, now on the run.

Dead man running?
Russia has offered to consider an asylum request from the US whistleblower Edward Snowden... (more) (sing-a-long)

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Guess Who Else is Scared of PRISM

Business and the advertising industry!

via... AdAge
Privacy legislation has been brewing in congress for years now, but a combination of public apathy and strong industry opposition has kept it at bay. Could the Prism data surveillance scandal become the watershed moment that propels it forward?

It's too soon to tell how revelations that the U.S. government has been mining web communications and phone logs will impact public opinion, but none of what the government has been implicated in doing would be possible if corporations weren't mining and storing consumer data, often for advertising purposes...

Of course, many in the ad industry hope this government data-gate serves as a foil to commercial data practices, resulting in less focus on how marketers gather and use consumer information. (more)

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