A computer hacker accessed highly personal data and controlled victims’ webcams as part of a sophisticated email scam carried out from his mother’s front room.
Matthew Anderson, 33, was a key member of an international gang, abusing his skills as a computer security expert to target businesses and individuals with spam containing hidden viruses, a court heard.
He controlled victims’ webcam devices remotely to see inside their homes, at one point boasting to a friend that he made a teenage girl cry by doing so.
Major national and international organisations, including Macmillan Publishers, the Toyota car company and the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, were also targeted in what prosecutor Hugh Davies described as a “fundamental breach of security”. (more)
After secret talks in a room designed to prevent bugging, British tour operator Thomas Cook has bought a majority stake in Intourist, the Russian travel agency founded under Joseph Stalin. (
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Stalin founded a travel agency?!?!(Shrugs shoulders, walks away with a head full of jokes that will never see the light of day.) Sortalike when you’re in a Siberian… (Slaps hand over mouth.)
A number of suspicious women in the Gulf state of Qatar are spying on their husbands by using readily available hi-tech devices.
The women are trapping their husbands by handing spy devices, like miniature cameras fitted in pens and cigarette lighters, as gifts, The Peninsula newspaper reported.
Some wives who are not able to make their husbands accept such gifts slyly place the devices in their cars, the report said.
The paper said that it interviewed “a number of women who said their friends or colleagues admitted to spying or having spied on their husbands as they suspected they were cheating on them.” (more) (eBay Spy Central) (sing-a-long)
Australia – Senior managers of the companies building Australia’s largest desalination plant in Victoria have denied authorising covert surveillance at the site.
Construction workers have walked off the site near Wonthaggi, south-east of Melbourne, following allegations the project’s joint venture company, Thiess Degremont, hired operatives to spy on them. The allegations were revealed this morning by The Australian newspaper, which says it has sources and documents about what was called Operation Pluto.
The newspaper says it was a secret deal between senior managers of Thiess and the Australian Security Intelligence group (ASI), a company run by experienced strike breaker Bruce Townsend. (
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Oracle still hasn’t succeeded in dragging SAP’s ex-chief executive into court to testify on what he knew about the subsidiary TomorrowNow’s “industrial espionage.”
On Monday, what Oracle got instead was an apology from the former CEO’s replacement: co-CEO Bill McDermott.
It was another tech-sector captain deflated in the circus of Oracle’s prosecution of its number-one business applications rival over money. (more)
Business espionage is costly. It is costly if you don’t catch it. It is costly if you do catch it and ride the legal hamster wheel. While an apology is gentlemanly, it doesn’t fill the loss.
Tip: Don’t let it happen in the first place. Get your ounce of prevention, here.
