spy Archives - David Papp - your tech expert

All Wi-Fi now hackable – this affects everyone!

2017/10/172017/10/17

This topic is so serious, I feel obliged to tell as many people as possible. This affects everyone! An extremely serious vulnerability has been exposed affecting everyone. We all use WiFi and we are all vulnerable to this latest attack. KRACK ATTACK Two Belgian researchers discovered a vulnerability in the WiFi protocol (last year! …

What is the dark web (aka deep web, deepnet, hidden web, invisible web, undernet)?

2016/01/05

Many of you have likely heard the terms dark web, deep web, deepnet, hidden web, invisible web, or undernet in some of your discussions, books, or even movies. This is another layer of World Wide Web (WWW) content that exists on these darknets which is overlayed using the public Internet however you require specific software and configurations to access. This hidden content is not considered part of the surface web we all use on a daily basis. Big search engines like Google or Bing do not crawl and index this darknet content.

One of the most well-known underground sites was the anonymous narcotics bazaar called the Silk Road. It had been running for 2.5 years until the FBI shut it down in the fall of 2013. When they seized the website, they also got $4 million in bitcoins which was the cryptocurrency being used to buy drugs on the Silk Road. The Silk Road generated an estimated $1.2 billion in revenues since its creation.

How do you access the dark web?

Who is listening to you and recording everything?

2015/12/18

Google, Microsoft, Apple, Samsung, and now Barbie.

Google has admitted to scanning your personal Gmail accounts to target ads based on common keywords found. They also record a lot of information “for your convenience” if you make are logged into Google or use a Chromebook. This includes every site you visit, every search term you use, the YouTube videos you watch and saving your passwords.

Microsoft records Skype instant messages (IMs) and has the potential for calls as well.

Apple records all Siri voice commands for an undetermined period of time. Microsoft records all Cortana voice commands.

We were too lazy to get up and walk over to a TV to change the channel so now we have remotes. Now we are even lazier because there are smart-TVs which listen for commands using voice-recognition features. This means the TV is constantly listening to all your conversations in your room, uploading those to the Internet to be processed, and determining if there are any commands in those voice recordings. They also save all the recordings for an undetermined amount of time to improve their products.

And if you still aren’t convinced big brother is watching you, we now allow our children to talk to Barbie, have that information uploaded and processed, and reply back. Parents can choose to have those audio files of conversations stored on a website which means hackers can access them as well. The “Hello Barbie” app (iOS and Android) uses authentication credentials that can be reused by hackers. It also connects a mobile device to any unsecured WiFi network who’s name includes the word barbie. You can use that information to access the home WiFi network and also everything that Hello Barbie is recording.

The gadgets that spy on your phone – and you

2015/02/12

It’s no secret that many governments have been keeping tabs on their citizens through controversial surveillance methods. Different agencies shell out millions of dollars on complex machines developed by tech companies – and with customers this demanding and lots of money, it’s no wonder why this particular sector of the tech industry is booming.

Take Harris Corporation, for example. For the past couple of years, it has sold a wide range of clandestine mobile phone surveillance technologies to different government agencies (which, yes, includes the National Security Agency). According to ArsTechnica.com, the company has earned over $40 million since 2004, all thanks to spy technology sales.

Here are some of the surveillance gadgets that have been used in the country over the decade.

How to Protect Yourself against Online Spying, NSA PRISM/Fairview can spy on anyone

2013/09/05

Americans (and now other countries) are becoming increasingly concerned with the online protection of their personal information. There have been numerous stories in the press lately of hacked websites, identity theft, and eavesdropping, among many other alarming “criminal” acts. Recently, the Washington Post ran a story that included the publishing of four slides, all leaked from the United States National Security Agency (NSA). These slides clearly discussed, in extreme detail, how the domestic PRISM program collects its data.

Other countries are also being “spied” on with a different surveillance program called Fairview. A recent example is the surveillance on millions of citizens of Brazil.