Austrian court finds unnamed retired Army colonel guilty of spying for Russia
June 11, 2020 Leave a comment
A court in Austria has found a retired Army colonel guilty of providing classified military information to Russia, following a closed-door trial. Interestingly, the alleged spy’s name has not been made public. Some Austrian media have been referring to him as “Martin M.”.
The retired colonel was arrested in November of 2018, reportedly after having recently retired following a long military career. Austria’s Defense Ministry said at the time that the arrest came after a tip given to the Austrian government by an unnamed European intelligence agency from a “friendly country”. Martin M. reportedly served in peacekeeping missions in the Golan Heights and Cyprus before being posted at one of the Austrian Armed Forces’ two headquarters, located in the western city of Salzburg. It was around that time, say prosecutors, that the unnamed man began spying for Russia. Starting in 1992, he was in regular contact with his Russian handler, who was known to him only as “Yuri”.
“Yuri” was later identified by Austrian authorities as Igor Egorovich Zaytsev, who is allegedly an intelligence officer for the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces. Known as GRU, the organization is Russia’s primary military-intelligence agency. The Austrian government has issued an international arrest warrant for a Zaytsev.
Zaytsev reportedly trained Martin M. in the use of “sophisticated equipment”, according to the Austrian prosecutor, which he used to communicate classified information to Moscow. He is thought to have given Russia information on a range of weapons systems used by the Austrian Army and Air Force, as well as the personal details of high-ranking officers in the Austrian Armed Forces. Austrian media initially reported that the alleged spy was paid nearly $350,000 for his services to Moscow.
During his trial, Martin M. reportedly admitted that he had received payments form the Russians to provide information. But he claimed that the information he gave them was already publicly available. His legal team compared his role to that of a “foreign correspondent” for a news service. The court, however, did not accept that argument and on Tuesday sentenced Martin M. to three years in prison.
Soon after his sentencing, the defendant was released on parole, after the court counted the 18 months he has served behind bars since his arrest as part of his prison sentence. His legal team said they plan to appeal the sentence.
► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 11 May 2020 | Permalink
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Researchers claim discovery of remote eavesdropping method using light bulbs
June 15, 2020 1 Comment
The announcement was made by Ben Nassi, Yaron Pirutin and Boris Zadov, who work at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and the Weizmann Institute of Science, near Tel Aviv. The three researchers said they used a low-cost telescope, which they placed nearly 100 feet from a target room containing a commercially available standard light bulb. They then placed each telescope behind a $400 electro-optical sensor. The goal of the contraption was to measure the minuscule changes in light output from the bulb, which are caused by sound vibrations off the bulb’s surface.
The electrical signals captured by the telescopes were digitized using commercially available analog-to-digital converters, before being transferred onto a laptop. The researchers then used commercially available software to filter out noise, and were gradually able to reconstruct clearly audible recordings of the sounds inside the target room. They claim that the resulting recording is clearly audible and can even be transcribed using Google speech-to-text software.
The three Israeli researchers say they now plan to present their findings at the Black Hat security conference in August, which will be held virtually due to health concerns caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Speaking to Wired magazine last weekend, they said that their goal is “not to enable spies or law enforcement, but to make clear to those on both sides of surveillance what’s possible”. “We’re not in the game of providing tools”, they said.
► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 15 June 2020 | Permalink
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