The down side of social not-working…
Many of the most popular applications, or “apps,” on the social-networking site Facebook Inc. have been transmitting identifying information—in effect, providing access to people’s names and, in some cases, their friends’ names—to dozens of advertising and Internet tracking companies, a Wall Street Journal investigation has found.
The issue affects tens of millions of Facebook app users, including people who set their profiles to Facebook’s strictest privacy settings. (more)
…So, the problem of cell phone interception is real, growing and unlikely to be eliminated in the foreseeable future.
For an organization, knowing that phone calls have been intercepted at all is difficult. There is rarely a test that can be done, other than looking at the consequences of a lost deal or secret information in the public domain. In fact, in 2010, the Ponemon Institute found that 80 percent of CIOs admitted they would not find out directly if they had been intercepted.
The problem shows a wide geographical variation, both in the number of instances and in the public perception of risk.
In the United States and mainland Europe, the perception of risk is relatively low. However, travel to Latin America or some parts of Asia, and the perception of an issue has reached the consumer with advertisements on mainstream television for protection equipment.
Yet few executives traveling around the world have taken special measures to secure their cell phone conversations.
Research from ABI shows that 79 percent of companies’ cell phones were routinely used to discuss information that, if intercepted, would lead to material loss to the business.
Yet less than one in five had in place adequate measures to address this risk. (
more)
New book coming soon…
Stay tuned for details.
Phone Creeper V0.9 (BETA) for Windows Mobile Cell Phones – “This is a phone espionage suite.
It can be silently installed by just inserting an SD card with the files below on it. The program does not show up under installed programs or running programs and allows for a useful array or features.
Phones running this software can be remotely controlled by SMS text messages. All commands will be silently received and deleted immediately and results will be issued back to sender. Pre-configured settings can be added to the installer to have your own default password and phone number to receive live updates. By default,
this program will silently reinstall itself even after a hard reset, if the memory card with these files is still in the device.”
(more)
P.S. There is even an Anti-Creeper app. Both are FREE but donations are solicited.
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania say they’ve discovered a way to circumvent the networking technology used by law enforcement to tap phone lines in the U.S.
The flaws they’ve found “represent a serious threat to the accuracy and completeness of wiretap records used for both criminal investigation and as evidence in trial,” the researchers say in their paper, set to be presented Thursday at a computer security conference in Chicago.
Following up on earlier work on evading analog wiretap devices called loop extenders, the Penn researchers took a deep look at the newer technical standards used to enable wiretapping on telecommunication switches. They found that while these newer devices probably don’t suffer from many of the bugs they’d found in the loop extender world, they do introduce new flaws. In fact, wiretaps could probably be rendered useless if the connection between the switches and law enforcement are overwhelmed with useless data, something known as a denial of service (DOS) attack. (more)
