10 Ways Wall Street’s Corporate Spies Steal Information From Your Company

businessinsider.com
Right now, some of your most sensitive corporate data is being stolen by corporate spies.

These spies work for the competition, looking to get the edge over you, and they work for investors

, hoping to get ahead of the market.

A new book by Eamon Javers, Broker, Trader Lawyer, Spy: The Secret World Of Corporate Espionage, reports that such companies as Goldman Sachs, SAC Capital, and KPMG have employed these spies.

In digging for information on a company, the spies look for sources who usually come in one of two flavors:

• The first is a “male in his mid 20s who is somewhat bored, likes to party, needs money, likes women, sports and risk, is disrespectful to his managers, and is patriotic.”

• The second is a young woman who is insecure, overweight, and bitchy. She doesn’t have a boyfriend and except for a strong relationship with her mother, has only fake friends.

But it’s not enough to get just the profile of the potential sources inside your company. We’ve gone through Javers’ book and identified the 20 common tactics used in corporate espionage.

More…

Security chip that does encryption in PCs hacked

usatoday.com

SAN FRANCISCO — Deep inside millions of computers is a digital Fort Knox, a special chip with the locks to highly guarded secrets, including classified government reports and confidential business plans. Now a former U.S. Army computer-security specialist has devised a way to break those locks.

The attack can force heavily secured computers to spill documents that likely were presumed to be safe. This discovery shows one way that spies and other richly financed attackers can acquire military and trade secrets, and comes as worries about state-sponsored computer espionage intensify, underscored by recent hacking attacks on Google.

The new attack discovered by Christopher Tarnovsky is difficult to pull off, partly because it requires physical access to a computer. But laptops and smart phones get lost and stolen all the time. And the data that the most dangerous computer criminals would seek likely would be worth the expense of an elaborate espionage operation.

More…

Corporate Espionage, Ex-Bristol worker arrested carrying company secrets as well as business plan

Corporate Espionage

syracuse.com
FBI agents arrested a Bristol-Myers Squibb employee who they said had downloaded to an e-mail account “substantially all” the confidential procedures used at the company’s Syracuse facility.

Syracuse, NY — Until Tuesday, Shalin Jhaveri, who has a Ph.D., was in the management training program at Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. in Syracuse, a position that gave him access to some of the company’s more valuable secret processes.

On Tuesday night, the 29-year-old Syracuse resident was arrested and faces up 10 years in jail for stealing company secrets in preparation for starting a competing company in his native India, according to court documents.

A criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Syracuse Wednesday shows:

Jhaveri’s had registered an Internet domain for the company he planned to start with his father. He had chosen a name, Cherish Bio Sciences, and was talking with an individual whom he thought was going to invest with him.

What Jhaveri didn’t know is that Bristol had been watching him closely since December 22. Computer security specialists within the company had been using forensic software to track his use of a company laptop, including individual key strokes.

More…

Corporate Espionage is Increasing Dramatically Are You at Risk? Contact Us. We can help. ~JDL

Google Asks NSA to Help Secure Its Network

wired.com

Google is teaming up with the National Security Agency to investigate the recent hack attack against its network in a bid to prevent another assault, according to The Washington Post.

The internet search giant is working on an agreement with the controversial agency to determine the attacker’s methods and what Google can do to shore up its network.

Sources assured the Post that the deal does not mean the NSA will have access to users’ searches or e-mail communications and accounts. Nor will Google share proprietary data with the agency.

But the move is raising concerns among privacy and civil rights advocates.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a Freedom of Information Act request on Thursday, shortly after the agreement was made public, seeking more information about the arrangement. (.pdf)

More…

SKorean, US Firms Embroiled in Chip Espionage Case

abcnews.go.com

The world’s top producers of computer memory chips are embroiled in an apparent case of industrial espionage after South Korean prosecutors indicted 18 people over alleged technology theft.

Prosecutors said Thursday those involved — including employees of U.S. company Allied Materials and its South Korean unit — are suspected of leaking semiconductor technology belonging to South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co. to its domestic rival Hynix Semiconductor Inc.

The case highlights the intense competition among chipmakers and other sellers of high tech products, who frequently sue each other over alleged patent infringements.

More…

Ukraine breaks up alleged Russian spy ring

washingtonpost.com

KIEV, Ukraine — A spying scandal between Ukraine and Russia threatens to heighten tensions between the countries as Ukraine’s holds a presidential runoff election Sunday between a Russian-leaning candidate and Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.

Ukraine’s security service said Wednesday five Russians were detained last month after being caught trying to obtain confidential military information from a Ukrainian citizen.

“We have broken up an FSB spying operation,” Ukrainian security services spokeswoman Marina Ostapenko said.

Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB, confirmed its agents had been detained, but accused Ukraine of sensationalizing the issue.

More…

Cisco’s Backdoor For Hackers

forbes.com

ARLINGTON, Va. — Activists have long grumbled about the privacy implications of the legal “backdoors” that networking companies like Cisco build into their equipment–functions that let law enforcement quietly track the Internet activities of criminal suspects. Now an IBM researcher has revealed a more serious problem with those backdoors: They don’t have particularly strong locks, and consumers are at risk.

In a presentation at the Black Hat security conference Wednesday, IBM ( IBM – news – people ) Internet Security Systems researcher Tom Cross unveiled research on how easily the “lawful intercept” function in Cisco’s ( CSCO – news – people ) IOS operating system can be exploited by cybercriminals or cyberspies to pull data out of the routers belonging to an Internet service provider (ISP) and watch innocent victims’ online behavior.

More…

BBC producer secretly filmed himself in bed with TV and radio presenters by hiding camera in smoke alarm

dailymail.co.uk
A womanizing BBC producer faces jail for secretly taping a series of sexual liaisons with more than ten lovers using a hidden camera in his bedroom.

Benjamin Wilkins hid the CCTV device in a smoke alarm to tape his amorous encounters with a succession of women that he lured back to his flat.

He was caught when his girlfriend – and mother of his child – discovered a box of
DVDs hidden in his loft and called the police.

The scandal has left former colleagues, friends and lovers shocked and disgusted by the actions of the ‘well-liked and trusted’ 36-year-old Wilkins.

Many of the women Wilkins seduced hold senior positions in television and
radio – both presenting and in production roles – but cannot be named for legal
reasons.

A BBC insider said: ‘None of these women would have agreed to having sex with him if they had known he was violating their privacy, taping them with a hidden camera. We are sickened.’

Wilkins also used another miniature camera to record his partners
when they went to use the bathroom at his former flat in Brixton, South London.

He was also found to have stored secret footage of his sexual encounters – which took place over three years – on a home computer.

More…

Climate emails hacked by spies

independent.co.uk

A highly sophisticated hacking operation that led to the leaking of hundreds of emails from the Climatic Research Unit in East Anglia was probably carried out by a foreign intelligence agency, according to the Government’s former chief scientist. Sir David King, who was Tony Blair’s chief scientific adviser for seven years until 2007, said that the hacking and selective leaking of the unit’s emails, going back 13 years, bore all the hallmarks of a co-ordinated intelligence operation – especially given their release just before the Copenhagen climate conference in December.

The emails were stolen from a backup computer server used by the University of East Anglia. They contained private discussions between climate scientists that have embarrassed those involved, particularly Professor Phil Jones, who has stepped down from his post as head of the unit pending an independent inquiry into whether there is any evidence of scientific misconduct. He is not implicated in the hacking.

More…

CIA moonlights in corporate world

politico.com

In the midst of two wars and the fight against Al Qaeda, the CIA is offering operatives a chance to peddle their expertise to private companies on the side — a policy that gives financial firms and hedge funds access to the nation’s top-level intelligence talent, POLITICO has learned.

In one case, these active-duty officers moonlighted at a hedge-fund consulting firm that wanted to tap their expertise in “deception detection,” the highly specialized art of telling when executives may be lying based on clues in a conversation.

The never-before-revealed policy comes to light as the CIA and other intelligence agencies are once again under fire for failing to “connect the dots,” this time in the Christmas Day bombing plot on Northwest Flight 253. But sources familiar with the CIA’s moonlighting policy defend it as a vital tool to prevent brain-drain at Langley, which has seen an exodus of highly trained, badly needed intelligence officers to the private sector, where they can easily double or even triple their government salaries. The policy gives agents a chance to earn more while still staying on the government payroll.

More…