Espionage Archives - Page 9 of 15 - Exec Security TSCM

Ireland: Listening device found in ceiling

Here is a little news from earlier in the year that we overlooked. The photos show the extent that some will go to in order to accomplish their eavesdropping.

The Irish News, 5/13/2015

A former republican prisoner has discovered a sophisticated listening device embedded in the ceiling of his north Belfast home. Terry McCafferty (47) said he made the discovery while changing bulbs in spotlights in the living room of his house in the New Lodge area.

The device was built into a joist in a space been the ceiling and a bedroom floor. Operated by wi-fi, with a battery back-up power supply, he said it had been carefully concealed and contained several small listening devices that were attached to spotlights.

A former member of the Real IRA, the grandfather was jailed for 12 years in 2005 after being convicted of leaving a bomb outside […]

Charles Patterson2015-12-25T19:22:35-05:00December 25th, 2015|

Spy toys for Christmas?

Every year there is an increasing number of spy-themed toys for kids.

This year, one company wants the adults to get into the fun, spying on Santa, as well.

The Santa Stake Out Kit by OpticPlanet

For only $6499 you can get:

Exec Security2016-12-16T20:23:38-05:00December 24th, 2015|

Stories of a spy, Hugh Montgomery, 63 years in the CIA

Ambassador Hugh Montgomery is considered one of the founding fathers of the CIA after serving 63 years in the agency. Recruited as an OSS officer, Montgomery recounts his most harrowing and memorable experiences behind enemy lines.

Exec Security2016-12-16T20:23:38-05:00December 1st, 2015|

The effects of bugging an office, 12 years later, FBI bugger reflects on Phila incident.

A bug in your office could hurt you in many ways. Theft of information is one, but the revelation that the bugging took place can have other ramifications as well. The discovery of an FBI bug in the mayor’s office by the Philadelphia Police, may have cost the opponent his election- even though he had nothing to do with it at all.

If you suspect that listening devices may have been installed in your office or conference room, the inspection and any follow up investigation needs to be handled very discretely.

Mitch Blacher from NBC10 was able to interview J.J. Klaver, the FBI agent who planted the bugs.

Site of 2003 FBI bugging operation, office of Philadelphia Mayor John Street

Former FBI Agent Who ‘Bugged’ Mayor Street’s Office Speaks Out by Mitch Blacher,

Exec Security2016-12-16T20:23:38-05:00November 16th, 2015|

Happy 101st Birthday of Hedy Lamarr, and thanks for frequency hopping.

November 9, the Google Doodle (on Google’s home page) celebrated the birthday of Hedy Lamarr, born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler, 9 November 1914 – 19 January 2000.

She is most known for being a beautiful movie star, but she was also a talented inventor who helped develop spread spectrum frequency hopping technology, used in World War II. Though the US Navy did not adopt the technology until the 1960s, the principles of her work are now incorporated into modern Wi-Fi, CDMA and Bluetooth technology.

Her official website: https://www.hedylamarr.com/

Google’s tribute:

Here is a short History Channel presentation “The Patent Files”:

Happy Birthday, Hedy.

Exec Security2015-11-09T09:24:04-05:00November 9th, 2015|

Did Anti-Francis Cabal Plant a Spy in the Vatican?

The Daily Beast reports:

VATICAN CITY — For many inside the Vatican, Francesca Immacolata Chaouqui was trouble from the start. The willowy 32-year-old brunette raised eyebrows almost immediately in 2013 when, at 30, she was handpicked by Pope Francis as the only laywoman on an eight-memberadvisory panel called the Commission for Reference on the Organization of the Economic-Administrative Structure of the Holy See.

On Monday, the Vatican confirmed that Chaouqui, along with a Spanish monsignor named Lucio Vallejo Balda, who was the secretary of COSEA, had been arrested for leaking documents to journalists.

Sound familiar? It should. In 2012, Pope Benedict’s butler Paolo Gabriele was arrested for just the same crime, and the butler was charged with leaking to just the same journalist, Gianluigi Nuzzi, who has a new book coming out this week.

His previous book, His Holiness, is widely believed to be the last straw that led to the eventual resignation of […]

Exec Security2016-12-16T20:23:38-05:00November 6th, 2015|

China: Spywatch, keeping an eye on your neighbors, dial 12339 to report a spy.

New York Times reports:

Seen a Spy? With New Hotline, China Invites You to Call It In

To the tangle of emergency phone numbers in China — 110 for the police, 119 for fire, 120 for ambulance — add another: dial 12339 to report a spy.

The spy hotline made its debut in the northeastern province of Jilin on Sunday, according to a report in the state-controlled newspaper Jilin Daily, one year after the Chinese authorities introduced a new counterespionage law.

The hotline, run by the Jilin state security bureau, was set up to help citizens who encounter behavior that would harm China’s national security to report the matter immediately to state security organs, the Jilin Daily article said.

It warned of individuals or groups who “steal, pry out, buy or otherwise illegally obtain state secrets or intelligence, or […]

Exec Security2016-12-16T20:23:38-05:00November 2nd, 2015|

Tech alert: Hacking Siri or Google Now through radio waves

Researchers in France have found that by beaming radio waves at the headset wire attached to a smart phone, they can modulate the radio waves to cause the signals in the headset wires to interpret it as voice, thus triggering the voice commands of Siri or Google Now services.

A lot of things have to be right for this to work- the smart phone must have a wired headset, the headset must have a microphone, (give them time, Bluetooth may be next), and the radio signal needs to be a powerful signal broadcast nearby with a large antenna, and you need to be oblivious to your phone suddenly reacting to unknown forces.

If you see a coworker pointing an antenna like this at your smart phone you might have cause to worry.

Voice communication can be “transposed” into other forms of modulation fairly easily. Besides radio […]

Exec Security2016-12-16T20:23:39-05:00October 15th, 2015|

Espionage in history: How Soviets used IBM Selectric keyloggers to spy on US diplomats

Interesting article from ArsTechnica.com discusses the sophisticated bugging efforts made by the Soviet Union during the Cold War era. The information was revealed in 2012, with the original document published by the NSA available here, from the Center Cryptologic History.

A National Security Agency memo that recently resurfaced a few years after it was first published contains a detailed analysis of what very possibly was the world’s first keylogger—a 1970s bug that Soviet spies implanted in US diplomats’ IBM Selectric typewriters to monitor classified letters and memos.

IBM Selectric Typewriter

The electromechanical implants were nothing short of an engineering marvel. The highly miniaturized series of circuits were stuffed into a metal bar that ran the length of the typewriter, making them invisible to the naked eye. The implant, which could only be seen using X-ray equipment, recorded the precise location of the […]

Exec Security2016-12-16T20:23:39-05:00October 13th, 2015|

Corporate printer vulnerability via wifi – using drones and a Roomba…

Corporate offices often have centralized printers connected to their wired network for shared printing. That can sometimes be inconvenient so what’s a good assistant to do? Run out to the local office supply store to pick up an inexpensive desktop printer. These printers usually have wifi built in and turned on by default.

When sweeping corporate offices we regularly find such printers while performing our network inspection. The wifi is usually unsecure and open for anyone to log into. If the staff (or executives) are using the wifi for their local printing, they then may be opening up themselves for hacking and spoofing as described in the Wired article below. We’ve even found executives bringing in their wifi printer from home just for the convenience.

The researchers in the article used a drone to reach the upper floors of an office building, but a disgruntled or over zealous employee could perform the same hacks […]

Exec Security2016-12-16T20:23:39-05:00October 8th, 2015|

Dissident Chinese artist finds his studio was bugged

Ai Weiwei has posted a number of pictures of what he says are listening devices found in his Beijing studio. The Chinese dissident artist captioned one photo of a bug on Instagram with “There will always be surprises”. His friend Liu Xiaoyuan confirmed the bugs were found after the artist returned from a trip to Germany. Xiaoyuan tweeted that they were found when redecoration started on Ai’s home and were found in the office and a living room.

This Instagram photo shows a listening device behind a plug socket in a wall

The pictures show the devices were hidden in electric sockets. ‘There will always be surprises’ was Ai Weiwei’s caption to this photo

The artist has retweeted an article saying listening devices had been found at his studio. His mother Gao Ying told Radio Free Asia that she believed the […]

Exec Security2016-12-16T20:23:39-05:00October 6th, 2015|

Old Israeli spy device found by Lebanese army

Times of Israel reports artificial rock containing camera, four batteries found in town near border; device said to date from before Israel’s withdrawal in 2001.

A device concealed in an artificial rock in the southern Lebanese town of Bani Hayyan. According to the Lebanese Army, the device is an Israeli surveillance camera. (screen capture: Lebanese Armed Forces Facebook page)

Soldiers from the Lebanese Armed Forces claimed Wednesday to have found a rock concealing an Israeli spying device in the south of the country.

The army said it found the device in the town of Bani Hayyan, around four kilometers from the border with Israel.

According to a report in al-Manar, a Hezbollah-affiliated website, the device included a camera and four batteries.

In a short video clip released by the Lebanese Army, a shiny surface appearing to be the lens of a camera can be seen through an […]

Exec Security2015-10-01T19:05:15-04:00October 1st, 2015|

Winning at chess- use spy technology and Morse code.

Italian chess player allegedly uses a spy pendant containing a hidden camera to cheat during Italian tournament (www.telegraph.co.uk)

An Italian chess player has been expelled from one of Italy’s most important tournaments after he allegedly used Morse code and a spy pendant containing a hidden camera to communicate with an accomplice.

Arcangelo Ricciardi entered the International Chess Festival of Imperia ranked 51,366 in the world, but astonished rivals as he breezed through the early stages of the competition to reach the eighth and penultimate round.

Jean Coqueraut, who refereed the tournament in Liguria, northern Italy, said he began to suspect something was wrong early on in the competition.

“In chess, performances like that are impossible,” he told La Stampa newspaper. “I didn’t think he was a genius, I knew he had to be a cheat.

“I kept on looking at him. He was always sitting […]

Exec Security2015-09-11T18:39:16-04:00September 11th, 2015|

Visual hacking- something worth looking at

The new iPhone 6s touts a 12 megapixel camera and the Samsung Galaxy S6 a 16 megapixel camera. You can get a lot of detail with such a camera. It may be time for corporations to re-think their employee policies and restrict photography to help employees, managers, and executives understand the potential for information leakage and theft from photos taken around the office. A selfie taken at an office or cubicle could unwittingly expose confidential information from computer screens, calendars, or posted notes (how many cubicles still have passwords posted?)

A recent article by Dan Burks at AmericanBanker.com looks into this problem. While he is mainly referring to banks, the problems and solutions apply to all industries.

…A visual hack could involve someone inside a bank branch or back office, such as a customer or delivery person, taking a picture of an employee’s computer screen. It could also involve capturing information from documents […]

Exec Security2016-12-16T20:23:39-05:00September 10th, 2015|

Japan: Government taking steps to fight industrial espionage

The Yomiuri Shimbun

The National Police Agency will soon team up with the Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry to fight industrial espionage.

Joint measures will include visits by police officers to about 10,000 domestic corporations with cutting-edge technology to give them advice, according to NPA sources.

Under the plan, which will be implemented as early as this autumn, companies with state-of-the art technology will also be provided with the latest information about how industrial spying is conducted, according to the NPA sources.

The move reflects growing concerns that the theft of leading technology from domestic companies could lower the international competitiveness of Japan’s corporate sector.

The economy ministry will list companies with sophisticated technologies or products that might be targeted by industrial spies from overseas and provide the information to the NPA.

Based on instructions from the NPA, officers of prefectural police forces will visit the companies’ head offices, plants and laboratories.

They will […]

Exec Security2015-08-11T17:56:21-04:00August 11th, 2015|

FBI offers video with insight into economic espionage

The FBI has recently produced a video called “The Company Man: Protecting America’s Secrets” that illustrates how a US company was targeted by foreign agents and how the company worked with the FBI to set up a sting operation to catch the perpetrators.

“Economic espionage is a problem that costs the American economy billions of dollars annually and puts our national security at risk. To raise awareness of the issue, the FBI and the National Counterintelligence and Security Center have launched a nationwide campaign and released a short film aimed at educating anyone with a trade secret about the threat and how they can help mitigate it.”

The full Company Man video is about 36 minutes long, but the FBI also have other related videos that are worth looking into, including interviews with corporate attorneys, security directors, and FBI agents discussing the threat of corporate espionage. Of […]

Exec Security2016-12-16T20:23:39-05:00August 7th, 2015|

Windows 10 security concern. Windows 10 wants to share your WiFi key through “WiFi Sense”

An article in The Register explains that a new Windows 10 feature could be opening up your wifi for others to use without your knowledge.

A Windows 10 feature, Wi-Fi Sense, smells like a security risk: it can share access to Wi-Fi networks with the user’s contacts.

Those contacts include their Outlook.com (neeHotmail) contacts, Skype contacts and, with an opt-in, their Facebook friends. There is method in the Microsoft madness – it saves having to shout across the office or house “what’s the Wi-Fi password?” – but ease of use has to be teamed with security. If you wander close to a wireless network, and your friend knows the password, and you both have Wi-Fi Sense, you can log into that network.

Wi-Fi Sense doesn’t reveal the plaintext password to your family, friends, acquaintances, and the chap at the takeaway who’s an […]

Exec Security2016-12-16T20:23:39-05:00July 29th, 2015|

Voicemail as a cyber attack vector

Modern phone systems, both VOIP and premise based PBX, can offer voicemail to email conversion, so that when a message is left in your voicemail box, the system will send you an email with the message recording as an attachment for you to click on to hear. That now becomes one more way for cyber hackers to lure victims into clicking on fake link containing malware.

Security researcher Graham Cluely discusses this and other recent attack methods in a article at Tripwire.com

MiniDionis: Where a Voicemail Can Lead to a Malware Attack

For just over a week, government departments, research institutes and other high-value targets have been on the sharp end of a sophisticated attack, where fake voicemails are being used to create a diversion while malware infects computer systems.

As security researchers at Palo Alto Networks’s Unit 42 division

Exec Security2016-12-16T20:23:39-05:00July 19th, 2015|