Archive for the 'Industrial Espionage' Category

Corporate blogging passed off as independent newsgathering

Published
by
Richard McEachin
on August 24, 2009
in Competitive Intelligence, Espionage and Industrial Espionage
. 0 Comments

Masquerading as an independent blogger might seem like an easy way to gather some intel, at least until you are exposed as this guy was.

Corporate Blogger, or Corporate Espionage?

Doug Cantwell, a Boeing spokesman who attended a recent industry symposium as an “independent blogger.” By passing himself off as a blogger — and not as a Boeing employee — Cantwell stirred up a controversy that could have serious implications for both companies that want to experiment with social media — and for reporters who work in the new medium.

your job will be much harder when you have to persuade someone that, yes, your blog  is a legitimate, independent news outlet and no, you’re not masquerading as a reporter for the purposes of collecting intel, corporate or otherwise.

when traditional journalism jobs — particularly in newspapers — are rapidly disappearing. A venture like Defensedialogue.com, it seems, opens the door to more cynical operators who are willing to blur the lines between journalism and other lines of business.

China’s Espionage and Cyber Attack Strategy

Published
by
Richard McEachin
on April 29, 2009
in Communication, Industrial Espionage, Intellectual Property Rights, Intelligence Services and Surveillance
. 0 Comments

An excellent article about the “recent discovery of Chinese cyber warfare attacks on foreign computers, on communication computers of visiting dignitaries, and espionage activities to assist a friendly country is building weapons of mass destruction (WMDI)” entitled China’s Silent Warfare at BLOg Source INTelligence reveals a lot about China’s espionage and cyber attack strategy.

Industrial Espionage News

Published
by
Richard McEachin
on March 19, 2009
in Industrial Espionage and News
. 0 Comments

Bad Times Can Make Firms Vulnerable to Espionage

Corporate espionage is always a threat, but when the economy is sour the temptation is greater and finding broke or disgruntled employees is easier.

Stamping out data leakage & industrial espionage during a recession

How the recession is impacting IT security and top tips to ring fence your data to minimise risk.

British pair charged in ‘industrial espionage’ row

Two Wyko engineers are alleged to have used a mobile telephone to photograph a secret piece of equipment at an American factory

Mobile Phones & Tin Foil Hats

Published
by
Richard McEachin
on January 12, 2009
in Espionage, Industrial Espionage, Intelligence Services, Security and Surveillance
. 0 Comments

Under certain circumstances, if you lose sight of your mobile telephone, then you may reasonably assume it has been compromised. These circumstances are more common than you might think. Here are two cases of this that I have encountered over the last year or so. Continue reading ‘Mobile Phones & Tin Foil Hats’

Industrial Espionage at its Finest

Published
by
Richard McEachin
on December 19, 2008
in Industrial Espionage
. 0 Comments

Sneaky Guy Loses

Data Slurping

Published
by
Richard McEachin
on November 11, 2008
in Industrial Espionage and Security
. 0 Comments

An excellent article at Sharp Ideas about software called Slurp that turns an I-pod into a covert data theft device.

An unauthorized visitor shows up after work hours disguised as a janitor and carrying an iPod…He walks from computer to computer and “slurps” up all of the Microsoft Office files from each system. Within an hour he has acquired 20,000 files from over a dozen workstations…

Ex-Intel worker accused of IP theft

Published
by
Richard McEachin
on September 16, 2008
in Industrial Espionage
. 0 Comments

A former engineer at chip maker Intel Corp., Biswahoman Pani, has been charged with stealing trade secrets after taking a new job at rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc..  More than 100 pages of sensitive Intel documents, as well as 19 computer-aided-design drawings, were found in a search of Pani’s house conducted on July 1.

He began working for AMD eight days before his employment at Intel ended. Pani still had access to Intel’s computer network. Russell said Pani used this access to collect sensitive documents that might have provided valuable competitive intelligence for his new employer.

“…there is no evidence AMD knew of Pani’s actions or encouraged them. Neither is there evidence that AMD ever received the confidential Intel files.”

You can read the entire article at The Boston Globe.

From Competitive Intelligence to Counter Intelligence

Published
by
Richard McEachin
on August 28, 2008
in Competitive Intelligence, Industrial Espionage and Security
. 0 Comments

I see a lot of silly security measures against the most improbable risk scenarios. Yet the simplest attacks succeed over and over again. We have to do more to defend against these simple, direct, and constantly repeated attacks.

The following books illustrate that mundane attacks, which so often succeed, represent an enormous drain on our economy. Understanding why these attacks result in large losses is the first step in preventing them. To work both sides of the street, the Competitive Intelligence professional should understand these attacks. The Competitive Intelligence professional will understand the risk better than anybody and should educate his colleagues about  the risks and solutions. The Competitive Intelligence professional will also be positioned to exploit the opposition’s failings where legally and ethically permitted.

Confessions of a Corporate Spy

A former National Security Agency analyst who is now an expert on corporate espionage offered chilling accounts yesterday of his easy penetration into a variety of U.S. companies. In one case, in just a few hours he was able to make off with product plans and specifications worth billions of dollars.

“Never measure security budgets by IT,” said Winkler, author of .

Other excellent books in this area are:

and  .

Napoleon said, “The art of war does not require complicated maneuvers; the simplest are the best, and common sense is fundamental. From which one might wonder how it is generals make blunders; it is because they try to be clever.”

Applying Napoleon’s maxim on simplicity to protecting critical data throughout your organization would go a long way to securing your company’s most precious asset.

Chinese Economic Espionage

Published
by
Richard McEachin
on July 8, 2008
in Espionage and Industrial Espionage
. 0 Comments

Woman accused of spying for China at Motorola

A Chinese spy was caught “red-handed,” according to federal authorities, as she was about to board a plane at O’Hare bound for Beijing.

Hanjuan Jin says she worked as a computer engineer for Schaumburg-based Motorola, a global leader in communications technology.

Federal agents say Jin was also working as a spy for a Chinese company, and she has been charged in a corporate espionage case that reflects a growing national security problem.

  • She downloaded hundreds of confidential documents valued at $600 million from Motorola’s internal network.
  • Arrived at O’Hare Airport with a one-way ticket to Beijing.
  • She was really carrying $30,000.00
  • A routine check of passengers revealed she was carrying the cash and a laptop computer with more than 30 compact data storage devices containing stolen Motorola files.

Dumpster-diving in the Digital Age

Published
by
Richard McEachin
on July 2, 2008
in Competitive Intelligence, Industrial Espionage and Security
. 0 Comments

Dumpster-diving — going through trash bins in hopes of finding paper records with valuable information like customer names or future product plans — is alive and well in the age of USB flash drives and portable music players.

An excellent article from Robert L. Scheier in Computerworld, on Monday, December 17, 2007 entitled, Dumpster-diving for e-data, discusses the risk factors and offers some solutions.

Popular Mechanics offers advice on how to destroy hard drives.

Secrets are Secret, unless you work in the UK Cabinet Office

Published
by
Richard McEachin
on June 19, 2008
in Competitive Intelligence, Industrial Espionage, Intellectual Property Rights and Intelligence Services
. 4 Comments

By now you have heard of the secret intelligence files left on a commuter train in England.

Keith Vaz MP, chairman of the powerful Home Affairs select committee told the BBC: “Such confidential documents should be locked away…they should not be read on trains.”

This should be a reminder to the private sector regarding trade secrets.

Trade Secrets

A trade secret is not protected by a Patent, Trademark, or Industrial Design. A trade secret is confidential and proprietary information that you protect because of its commercial value and the competitive advantage that it produces for your company.

Competitive Intelligence

Exposing a trade secret in public by working on a critical document on an airplane, leaving a trade secret on a commuter train, or exposing it in an proposal, may eliminate the confidential nature of the data, and once you do that, you have, by definition, given up protecting it, therefore, it is not a trade secret that you can claim as proprietary — your former trade secret moves into the public domain for all to see and use.

As a competitive intelligence practitioner, I often find former trade secrets loose in the public domain due to irresponsible security practices. If the owner does not protect the trade secret, it ceases to be confidential and proprietary data, and is likely to become somebody else’s competitive advantage, or worse still, it might become a standard practice for an entire industry.

Microsoft Forensic Analysis Tool for Police

Published
by
Richard McEachin
on May 19, 2008
in Industrial Espionage, Intelligence Services, Security, The Investigator's Computer and U.S.A.
. 0 Comments

Microsoft Has Developed Windows Forensic Analysis Tool for Police

The COFEE, which stands for Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor, is a USB “thumb drive” that was quietly distributed to a handful of law-enforcement agencies last June. Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith described its use to the 350 law-enforcement experts attending a company conference Monday.

The device contains 150 commands that can dramatically cut the time it takes to gather digital evidence, which is becoming more important in real-world crime, as well as cybercrime. It can decrypt passwords and analyze a computer’s Internet activity, as well as data stored in the computer.

It also eliminates the need to seize a computer itself, which typically involves disconnecting from a network, turning off the power and potentially losing data. Instead, the investigator can scan for evidence on site.

Microsoft did not develop the tools:

COFEE, according to forensic folk who have used it, is simply a suite of 150 bundled off-the-shelf forensic tools that run from a script. None of the tools are new or were created by Microsoft. Microsoft simply combined existing programs into a portable tool that can be used in the field before agents bring a computer back to their forensic lab.Microsoft wouldn’t disclose which tools are in the suite other than that they’re all publicly available, but a forensic expert told me that when he tested the product last year it included standard forensic products like Windows Forensic Toolchest (WFT) and RootkitRevealer.

With COFEE, a forensic agent can select, through the interface, which of the 150 investigative tools he wants to run on a targeted machine. COFEE creates a script and copies it to the USB device which is then plugged into the targeted machine. The advantage is that instead of having to run each tool separately, a forensic investigator can run them all through the script much more quickly and can also grab information (such as data temporarily stored in RAM or network connection information) that might otherwise be lost if he had to disconnect a machine and drag it to a forensics lab before he could examine it.

But given that a U.S. Federal court has ruled that U.S. border guards can search laptop computers without cause, this tool might see wider use than Microsoft anticipated.

l’Ecole de Guerre Economique

Published
by
Richard McEachin
on May 9, 2008
in Competitive Intelligence and Industrial Espionage
. 1 Comment

I asked Guy Gweth what he valued most from my time at School of Economic Warfare of Paris (EGE). His answer is quite enlightening. The school assumes that the competitive situation will be asymmetrical (weak France vs. strong adversary) and that the U.S.A. is the chief adversary with China and Asia on the horizon as future adversaries. This does not represent anything unusual or unwise on France’s part.

However, the name of this school, l’Ecole de Guerre Economique, should make you wonder if this is just another Competitive Intelligence (CI) school or not. Continue reading ‘l’Ecole de Guerre Economique’

Chinese Spies in the U.S.A.

Published
by
Richard McEachin
on May 5, 2008
in Espionage, Industrial Espionage, Intellectual Property Rights, Intelligence Services and Security
. 0 Comments

Chinese Use Front Companies, Students, Tourists, & Businessmen to Spy

Men with ‘highly sensitive’ cameras arrested at airport

Two men attempting to board a plane to China with nearly a dozen sensitive infrared cameras in their luggage were arrested on Saturday, a federal official said.

Yong Guo Zhi, a Chinese national, and Tah Wei Chao, a naturalized U.S. citizen, were arrested for investigation of trying to take thermal imaging cameras with potential military use to China without the proper export licenses, Weir said.

Israeli Private Investigators Convicted of Industial Espionage

Published
by
Richard McEachin
on May 2, 2008
in Industrial Espionage and Private Investigator
. 0 Comments

Four Israeli Private Investigators have been sentenced by an Israeli court on industrial espionage charges for their use of the Michael Haephrati’s Trojan software to steal commercial secrets on behalf of their clients.

Four members of the Israeli Modi’in Ezrahi private investigation firm including Asaf Zlotovsky, a manager at the firm was jailed for 19 months, with two other employees given 18 and 9 month sentences.

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