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Cellphone Spying Becoming Easier for Abusers and Stalkers

By Dawn in Cheaters, Cheating spouse, Debugging - Electronic Countermeasures, eavesdropping, gps, harassment, Infidelity, invasion of privacy, MSI Detective Services, Safety, stalking, Technology at January 9th, 2012 | No comments

Here is one company’s promise on its website to anyone who wants to eavesdrop on someone else’s cellphone: “You could now listen in 100% completely undetected.”

The average person now has easy access to spy technology allowing them to gather cellphone information, read private emails, and track someone’s location using GPS. Experts say that the technologies are being used by spouses and partners to track, harass and stalk. “Technology has just exploded. It’s so sophisticated now and it’s very easy to utilize these different technologies to keep tabs on a person and find out where they’re going,” said Gina Pfund, chief assistant prosecutor of the Domestic Violence Unit in Passaic County.

This is very scary stuff when this type of technology gets into the wrong hands or is abused. I know of one woman who was being stalked by her ex-boyfriend and eventually learned he was tracking her whereabouts via her cellphone.

Experts say the person watching or listening is often a family member and frequently a suspicious or controlling partner. They have scanned Facebook pages, viewed online web-browsing histories, and examined cellphone records for proof. However, some take it a step further, planting spyware on smart phones and computers.

Spyware is being aggressively marketed online as a means to find out if a spouse is cheating. It can be installed on computers to monitor keystrokes, emails and passwords and to take screen snapshots. Spy software can also be installed on a smart phone to allow a third party to monitor calls, view text messages and photos, and track a person’s location and movement via GPS. A built-in microphone can also be remotely activated and used as a listening device, even when a phone is turned off. Technology experts say the phone user has no idea they are being spied on. Read the full article »

Tags: cellphone spying, debugging, eavesdropping, eavesdropping detection tools, eavesdropping laws, gps, online security, Privacy, Security, stalkers

Alleged FBI Wiretapping Used to Prove Political Incumbent’s Attempt to Eliminate Opponent

By Dawn in Debugging - Electronic Countermeasures, eavesdropping, Elections, Illinois, MSI Detective Services, Politics at January 6th, 2012 | No comments

Listening Device Disguised as a Fob

It would come as no surprise that most politicians would prefer to run unopposed for election. This is a story of a political nobody who says he secretly recorded for the FBI an incumbent state senator offering him a state job and cash to drop out of the race.

The candidacy of Little Village community activist Raul Montes Jr. would seem to pose no danger to the election hopes of state Sen. Steve Landek, who also is the mayor of Bridgeview. Montes, 36, has never held political office, has raised no campaign donations and, judging by his one-man effort to circulate nominating petitions, has no network of volunteers behind him.

Yet Landek has waged a full-bore legal campaign to challenge Montes’ nominating petitions and remove him from the ballot.

Montes says that Landek followed up that effort last week by inviting him to a skybox at Toyota Park, owned by the village of Bridgeview, where he says Landek used a carrot-and-stick approach to try to back him out of the race — alternately threatening to dirty him up in the petition challenge while also offering financial inducements.

Neither tactic is considered all that unusual in the cutthroat business of petition gathering and petition challenges overseen by a small cadre of election lawyers who make it their specialty to keep candidates on or off the ballot. It’s a world where incumbents almost always have the upper hand.

However, in this case, Montes brought in the FBI to secretly record his conversation with Landek. According to Montes, he said Landek promised him a job working on his campaign and later with his Senate staff if he agreed to withdraw from the race. Landek isn’t commenting, but his lawyer, election law specialist Burt Odelson, said Landek understood his legal bounds and offered Montes nothing improper.

Montes says, that he had brought along an FBI eavesdropping device, disguised as a fob on his key ring, to record what turned out to be their 2½-hour conversation. He said he met two female FBI agents before the meeting with Landek, then followed them to a residential neighborhood near the stadium where they put the recording device on his keychain. Read the full article »

Tags: eavesdropping, eavesdropping detection tools, eavesdropping laws, electronic countermeasures

New Virus Raids Your Bank Account – but You Won’t Notice

By Dawn in Debugging - Electronic Countermeasures, Electronic Fraud, Electronic Theft, Hacking, MSI Detective Services, scam, Technology at January 6th, 2012 | No comments

Experts have told us that the best way to protect ourselves from an online financial scam is to diligently check our bank accounts. Unfortunately, this no longer provides any guarantees, because what you may be seeing on your screen may be an illusion.

Israeli-based Security firm Trusteer has found an elaborate new computer virus that not only helps fraudsters steal money from bank accounts — it also covers its tracks.

Think of a crime plot involving a spy who plans to break into a high-security building and begins by swapping out security camera video so guards don’t notice anything is amiss. This is known as a surveillance camera hack and the technique has been used in dozens of movies.

A new version of the widely prevalent SpyEye Trojan horse works much the same way, only it swaps out banking Web pages rather than video, preventing account holders from noticing that their money is gone.

The Trojan horse utilizes a powerful two-step process to commit the electronic crime. First, the virus lies in wait until a customer with an infected computer visits an online banking site, steals their login credentials and tricks the victim into divulging additional personal information such as debit card information. Then, after the stolen card number is used for a fraudulent purchase, the virus intercepts any further visits to the victim’s banking site and scrubs transaction records clean of any fraud. That prevents — or at least delays — consumers from discovering fraud and reporting it to the bank, buying the fraudster critical extra time to complete the crime. Read the full article »

Tags: bank account hacking, debugging, electronic countermeasures, Electronic Theft, fraud, hacking, online security

Anonymous Exposes 75,000 Credit Card Numbers

By Dawn in Crime, Debugging - Electronic Countermeasures, Electronic Fraud, Electronic Theft, Investigations, MSI Detective Services, Technology at January 5th, 2012 | No comments

We posted a story on 12/29/11 about the hacking group “Anonymous” boasting they had stolen 200 gigabytes worth of information from Stratfor – a U.S. based Security Think Tank. The stolen information obtained in the hacking incident included credit card numbers, passwords and home addresses.

Anonymous had made good on its threat and dumped 200 GB of names, email addresses and passwords for around 860,000 Stratfor users. Anonymous also exposed credit card numbers for 75,000 paying customers of Stratfor.

Stratfor’s services consist of providing reports on international security and related threats to government and military personnel as well as to the private sector. It is unknown whether Anonymous gained access to other, more sensitive information during the Stratfor hacks, which occurred on December 24.

The group posted the following ominous threat on Pastebin: “The time for talk is over.” “It’s time to dump the full 75,000 names, addresses, CCs and md5 hashed passwords to every customer that has ever paid Stratfor. But that’s not all: we’re also dumping ~860,000 usernames, email addresses, and md5 hashed passwords for everyone who’s ever registered on Stratfor’s site… Did you notice 50,000 of these email addresses are .mil and .gov?” Read the full article »

Tags: computer hacking, criminal investigation, cyber attack, cyber-crime, debugging, electronic countermeasures, Electronic Theft, identity theft, online security

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Archive for the ‘Debugging – Electronic Countermeasures’ Category

Cellphone Spying Becoming Easier for Abusers and Stalkers

Alleged FBI Wiretapping Used to Prove Political Incumbent’s Attempt to Eliminate Opponent

New Virus Raids Your Bank Account – but You Won’t Notice

Anonymous Exposes 75,000 Credit Card Numbers