Security Scrapbook - Espionage & Privacy News of the Week.
August 13, 2004
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To: Clients, colleagues and friends.
Subject: Espionage & Privacy News of the Week.
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Kevin's Security Scrapbook is published on an irregular
basis for a select audience. HTML versions are archived at http://www.spybusters.com/Security_Scrapbook.html
=================================================== SPECIAL SECTION -- Security Director News
SPECIAL SECTION -- Emailmania
SPECIAL SECTION -- Bugs, Spies and Video Tape
SPECIAL SECTION -- iPodius
SPECIAL SECTION -- The Friday Funnies ===================================================
SPECIAL SECTION -- Security Director News
Hackers Are Discovering a New Frontier: Internet Telephone Service "With Internet phones, hackers or disgruntled employees with access to a company's phone server can eavesdrop on conversations by surreptitiously installing software that can track voice packets...." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/02/technology/02virus.html?pagewanted=1
Call a hacker... Internet phone carriers such as Vonage should set up their systems so U.S. law enforcers can monitor suspicious calls, the Federal Communications Commission tentatively ruled on Wednesday. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5603020/
Tell the boss you need a new office, or a bug-proof room... iGuard Armor Panel™ simultaneously protects against water, humidity, smoke, acrid gasses, RF-EMI/EMP, explosion, construction hazards, dust, earthquakes, hurricanes, etc. as well as any secondary damaging effects, which generally result from experiencing these threats. http://www.ifortressinc.com/
Going once, going twice... Laptops containing sensitive financial details and all manner of corporate secrets can be snapped up at auctions for a pittance... Moral: "Wipe BEFORE you flush." http://tinyurl.com/5hard
Reading competitors' e-mail. Legally! "The United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts (UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. BRADFORD S. COUNCILMAN), in noting the decision of United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (ROBERT C. KONOP v. HAWAIIAN AIRLINES, INC., CV-96-04898-SJL), has made it clear that a provider of e-mail services can read e-mail sent by customers, and that they can use this information for their own benefit. This opens up a lot of possibilities."
(From The LUBRINCO Group August newsletter.) http://www.lubrinco.com
Find out if they read your email… When you use didtheyreadit, every e-mail that you send is invisibly tracked without alerting the recipient. But when they read your message, you will immediately receive the following information:
1. When, exactly, your email was opened.
2. How long your email remained opened.
3. Where, geographically, your email was viewed. http://didtheyreadit.com/
SPECIAL SECTION -- Bugs, Spies and Video Tape
Out FOXed... A former television executive was charged on Friday with wiretapping staff meetings at Fox's FX cable network after the company fired him and he went to work at competing networks, prosecutors said. Randolph Steve Webster, 38, is accused of wiretapping a conference room via telephone at FX between July 31, 2001 and Jan. 20, 2004, prosecutors said. http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=televisionNews&story http://da.co.la.ca.us/mr/073004b.htm
Industrial espionage 'real and out there' UK - The revelation that Marks and Spencer is investigating an apparent attempt to spy on the mobile phone records of its boss Stuart Rose has brought industrial espionage into sharp and somewhat worrying focus. ... For example, an electronic bug can be enclosed in an apparently normal mobile phone battery, creating a listening device that is forever powered by the said power source and able to transmit the user's two-way conversation. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3853913.stm
Brazil says they are krolling with spies... Brazilian police say they have arrested a man working for international risk consulting firm Kroll Inc on suspicions of spying on government officials during corporate investigations. ... Kroll strongly denied "any illegality." http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&story
China bats a thousand! A Chinese-American businessman will go on trial in China soon, accused of spying on China for arch-rival Taiwan while in the United States. David Dong, 52, also known as Dong Wei, is the latest in a string of U.S. citizens and permanent residents arrested in China on charges of spying for the self-ruled, democratic island which Beijing has claimed since the end of a civil war in 1949. ... Last December, China announced it had detained 24 Taiwanese and 19 mainlanders for espionage, and that all had confessed. http://abcnews.go.com/wire/US/reuters20040728_69.html
Taaape-HUT West Point Cadet Gets 18 Months In Jail For Videotaping Women
New York - Senior cadet and Army football player Mark Conliffe of Louisville, Ky., was sentenced earlier this month to military prison for taking semi-nude pictures and videos of eight female cadets. The photographs and videos were found by an information systems worker at West Point, who came across them during an upgrade of the U.S. Military Academy's computer network. http://www.wnbc.com/news/3591866/detail.html
Different Hollywood Florida - A Hollywood man, Anthony Ces Swanson, 40, is in jail after being arrested for allegedly spying on his girlfriend’s 15-year-old daughter by planting a tiny video camera in her room. ... Officials say there may be other victims and ask anyone with information about Swanson or the investigation to contact the Hollywood Police Department’s child exploitation unit at (954) 967-4411. http://www.nbc6.net/news/3588723/detail.html
Okay, go ahead and shoot the piano player... New Jersey - A longtime piano teacher is accused of hiding "spy-sized" cameras in his bathroom to make hundreds of videotapes of students and others using his toilet, police said. George Johnson, 68, was arrested on July 1 and police said they have since identified 44 people from viewing only a fraction of the 1500 tapes. About 84 boxes of videotapes were seized along with four computers and an "astronomical" amount of CDs, software and floppy discs said police detective Luietenant Mike Cerame. http://kyw.com/news/wcbskyw_story_204124551.html
Eye Spy Two Columbia University scientists have come up with a computer-based way to extract detailed information from the fleeting images of the world mirrored on the curved surface of the eye. ...the system may one day find use in surveillance cameras that spot suspicious behavior. http://tinyurl.com/4jclg
SPECIAL SECTION -- iPodius
Stupid security scare tactics... "Companies beware: Critical corporate data might be dancing out of the office with workers who bring their iPods to work. The research firm Gartner Inc. warns of security risks posed by the popular music player and other portable storage devices that plug into a PC's USB or FireWire ports. The iPod, like the rest, can hold data in addition to tunes." http://tinyurl.com/4kmtt
Knight of the Living iPods... Britain's Ministry of Defence has become the latest organization to add the iPod to its list of high-tech security risks. The pocket-sized digital music player, which can store thousands of songs, is one of a series of banned gadgets that the military will no longer allow into most sections of its headquarters in the UK and abroad. http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/internet/07/13/britain.mod.reut/index.html
Sanity. Here, Here... "...banning iPods and USB devices doesn't do any good...because the thief will ignore the ban. USB thumb drives are tiny. What are you going to do, strip search everyone who goes in and out of the building? The ban is a silly countermeasure that annoys all your innocent employees and doesn't faze the potentially guilty ones."
~ Bruce Schneier, http://www.counterpane.com
201-808-6011 ...a phone number you can give out if you don't want to give out your real number. http://www.rejectionhotline.com/ (for a list of similar numbers in most cities)
Voices come out of my finger when I stick it in my ear.
Really.
No, REALLY!!!! The FingerWhisper currently being developed at the NTT DoCoMo Yokosuka R&D center, in its quest for future communications possibilities, is a new kind of wearable telephone handset that utilizes the human hand as part of the receiver. http://www.nttdocomo.com/corebiz/ubiquity/fingerwhisper.html
Putting the WAR back into war-driving... Forget a modified Pringles can - what you really need is something that looks like an M-16 but with its firing mechanism replaced by a 14.6 dBi Yagi antenna that can get you online at up to 10 miles (16.1 km). http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/08/03/wi-fi_aerial_gun/
Eavesdropping Detection Services
United Kingdom Eavesdropping Detection Services
Voices come out of my finger when I stick it in my ear.