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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A senior researcher at McAfee has gone public with evidence of one of the largest cyber espionage campaigns in recent history, but while he has refused to speculate on who may be responsible for the theft of government secrets and corporate documents, other than to say it was “state sponsored,” fingers are pointing squarely at China.
The research, first reported by Vanity Fair, shows that perpetrators spent at least five years stealing documents and other intellectual property from 72 government and private organisations in 14 countries. Dmitri Alperovitch, vice president of threat research at McAfee is credited with discovering the the campaign, called Operation Shady RAT, or “remote access tool.”
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The threat posed by mobile phone spy software is very real. Spy software is readily available and affordable. Installing it is simple – provided you have access to the target phone. It is, however, ILLEGAL to install it on any phone other than your own within most states in Australia.
Phone spy software provides the ability to:
- Eavesdrop on active telephone calls
- Record all text (SMS) messages
- Track your location via GPS and GSM
- Activate the phone’s microphone via Bluetooth; and much more!
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Shady RAT intrusions were rampant in 2008, the year of the Beijing Olympics. (Click image for a large, readable version.)
(Credit:Â McAfee)
A widespread cyber-espionage campaign stole government secrets, sensitive corporate documents, and other intellectual property for five years from more than 70 public and private organizations in 14 countries, according to the McAfee researcher who uncovered the effort.
The campaign, dubbed “Operation Shady RAT” (RAT stands for “remote access tool”) was discovered by Dmitri Alperovitch, vice president of threat research at the cyber-security firm McAfee. Vanity Fair‘s Michael Joseph Gross was first to write about the findings. The targets cut across industries, including government, defense, energy, electronics, media, real estate, agriculture, and construction. The governments hit include the U.S., Canada, South Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan, and India.
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