The Finance Ministry on Friday said that no bugging device was found within its premises, including the office of Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee [ Images ], and the suspicious adhesive discovered was chewing gum-like material.
Minister of State for Finance S S Palanimanickam [ Images ] informed the Lok Sabha in a written reply that security audits are periodically conducted in the ministry and Mukherjee’s office.
One such routine security check was conducted on September 4, 2010, by the Investigation Directorate of the CBDT, which engaged the services of an expert with the domain knowledge of the subject, he said.
During this check, adhesive-like substances were noticed at various locations, Palanimanickam added.
“This was brought to the notice of the Prime Minister by the Union Finance Minister in September 2010,” he said.
The Prime Minister directed the Intelligence Bureau to conduct a secret inquiry into the matter.
“Adhesive patches were found stuck at a few places. The adhesive patches were subjected to chemicalforensic analysis, which revealed that the substance contained contents comparable with contents of chewing gum,” the minister added.
Physical examination of the recovered substance did not reveal any sign or mark suggestive of any device having been attached thereto.
“Thereafter, all these premises have been subjected to regular screening. During these exercises, no devices have been detected,” Palanimanickam added.
In June this year, the government faced a controversy of alleged snooping of the offices of Mukherjee and his aides in the North Block.
While social networking sites are not accessible from school computers, Lila Mularczyk, the deputy president of the NSW Secondary Principals’ Council, recently argued that cyber-bullying connected with school was treated in the same way, no matter when it occurred.
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BERLINÂ (Reuters) – A Berlin security firm has cracked the encryption code for some mobile phones using the Internet, German newspaper Handelsblatt reported on Wednesday, citing the company’s chief.
The discovery of a way to eavesdrop so-called General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) technology allows a user to read emails and observe the Internet use of a person whose phone is hacked, said Karsten Nohl, head of Security Research Labs.
“With our technology we can capture GPRS data communications in a radius of 5 km,” he told the paper before heading to a meeting of the Chaos Computer Club, a group that describes itself as Europe’s largest hacker coalition.
Phones using the newer UMTS standard are safer, Nohl said, but the crack effects industrial equipment, toll systems and anything using GPRS — including newer devices like Apple Inc’s iPhone or iPad which switch to the older GPRS in remote areas.
(Writing by Brian Rohan; Editing by Richard Chang)
Caption: Mike Tassey (l) and Rich Perkins (r) describe how they retrofitted a U.S. Army surplus target drone.
(Credit:Â Declan McCullagh/CNET)
LAS VEGAS–Forget Wi-Fi war driving. Now it’s war flying.
A pair of security engineers showed up at the Black Hat security conference here to show off a prototype that can eavesdrop on Wi-Fi, phone, and Bluetooth signals: a retrofitted U.S. Army target drone, bristling with electronic gear and an array of antennas.
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LAS VEGAS — There are so many ways to get hacked at the world’s largest hacker conference.
A hacker could bump against your pocket with a card reader that steals your credit card information. Or a hacker might eavesdrop on your Internet traffic through an unsecured Wi-Fi network. Or a hacker might compromise your cell phone while you charge it in the hotel’s public phone-charging kiosk.
The Internet connection here has been dubbed “the world’s most hostile network.” You might want to avoid the A.T.M.’s, too.
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