Special Services Group, a company that sells surveillance tools to the FBI, DEA, ICE, and other US government agencies, has had its secret sales brochure published. Motherboard received the brochure as part of a FOIA request to the Irvine Police Department in California. “The Tombstone Cam is our newest video concealment offering the ability to … Read More “Police Surveillance Tools from Special Services Group” »
Category: espionage
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Fireeye reports on a Chinese-sponsored espionage effort to eavesdrop on text messages: FireEye Mandiant recently discovered a new malware family used by APT41 (a Chinese APT group) that is designed to monitor and save SMS traffic from specific phone numbers, IMSI numbers and keywords for subsequent theft. Named MESSAGETAP, the tool was deployed by APT41 … Read More “Eavesdropping on SMS Messages inside Telco Networks” »
The trade war with China has reached a new industry: subway cars. Congress is considering legislation that would prevent the world’s largest train maker, the Chinese-owned CRRC Corporation, from competing on new contracts in the United States. Part of the reasoning behind this legislation is economic, and stems from worries about Chinese industries undercutting the … Read More “On Chinese “Spy Trains”” »
A sophisticated attacker has successfuly infiltrated cell providers to collect information on specific users: The hackers have systematically broken in to more than 10 cell networks around the world to date over the past seven years to obtain massive amounts of call records — including times and dates of calls, and their cell-based locations — … Read More “Cell Networks Hacked by (Probable) Nation-State Attackers” »
The Spanish Soccer League’s smartphone app spies on fans in order to find bars that are illegally streaming its games. The app listens with the microphone for the broadcasts, and then uses geolocation to figure out where the phone is. The Spanish data protection agency has ordered the league to stop doing this. Not because … Read More “Spanish Soccer League App Spies on Fans” »
Interesting article about how traditional nation-based spycraft is changing. Basically, the Internet makes it increasingly possible to generate a good cover story; cell phone and other electronic surveillance techniques make tracking people easier; and machine learning will make all of this automatic. Meanwhile, Western countries have new laws and norms that put them at a … Read More “How Technology and Politics Are Changing Spycraft” »
The International Spy Museum has reopened in Washington, DC. Powered by WPeMatico
In 2015, the Intercept started publishing “The Drone Papers,” based on classified documents leaked by an unknown whistleblower. Today, someone who worked at the NSA, and then at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, was charged with the crime. It is unclear how he was initially identified. It might have been this: “At the agency, prosecutors said, … Read More “Another NSA Leaker Identified and Charged” »
DNS hijacking isn’t new, but this seems to be an attack of unprecedented scale: Researchers at Cisco’s Talos security division on Wednesday revealed that a hacker group it’s calling Sea Turtle carried out a broad campaign of espionage via DNS hijacking, hitting 40 different organizations. In the process, they went so far as to compromise … Read More “New DNS Hijacking Attacks” »
Supply chain security is an insurmountably hard problem. The recent focus is on Chinese 5G equipment, but the problem is much broader. This opinion piece looks at undersea communications cables: But now the Chinese conglomerate Huawei Technologies, the leading firm working to deliver 5G telephony networks globally, has gone to sea. Under its Huawei Marine … Read More “China Spying on Undersea Internet Cables” »