Canada denies reports of spy devices found in military complex
October 3, 2013
By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org
The government of Canada has denied media reports that surreptitious listening devices were found in an Ottawa building complex that is currently being prepared to house Canada’s Department of National Defence. Canadian media reported on Monday that the mysterious spy devices were found by workers employed at the former headquarters of Nortel Networks, a Canadian telecommunications company that went bankrupt in 2009. Canada’s conservative government purchased Nortel’s former headquarters in Ottawa in 2011, and has invested close to C$1 billion (US$960 million) on a plan to move the country’s Defence Department to the site. The media reports did not specify whether the alleged eavesdropping devices were installed recently, or whether they date from the time when Nortel was headquartered at the site. In 2009, when the company declared bankruptcy, there were intense rumors that its operations had been harmed irreparably by an aggressive industrial espionage campaign conducted by Chinese hackers. On Monday, Canada’s CTV News reported that the country’s Department of National Defence was considering scrapping plans to move to the former Nortel complex, due to the discovery of the listening devices. On Monday, the Department of National Defence refused to comment directly on the allegations, stating simply that it could not provide “any information regarding specific measures and tests undertaken to secure a location or facility for reasons of national security”. On Tuesday, however, Canadian government officials told The Ottawa Citizen newspaper it had been assured by the Defence Department that “no listening devices” had been found at the former Nortel site. Read more of this post
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Researchers claim discovery of remote eavesdropping method using light bulbs
June 15, 2020 by Joseph Fitsanakis 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
Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with academic research, Black Hat Technical Security Conference, eavesdropping, Israel