Aydınlık raid reveals Ergenekon wiretapped several people

Sound recordings of the phone conversations of a number of prominent figures from various circles — including the prime minister, Cabinet members, journalists and mayors — have been found on CDs seized in a recent police raid at the offices of the Aydınlık newsweekly, as part of the investigation into Ergenekon, a clandestine organization charged with plotting to overthrow the government.

Police raided the offices of Ulusal Kanal TV station and the Aydınlık newsweekly — a publication put out by the Workers’ Party (İP), whose leader, Doğu Perinçek, is an Ergenekon suspect — over alleged links to the criminal network on Monday. The police reportedly acted on the Aydınlık’s latest cover story, which included a 2004 phone conversation between Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (KKTC) President Mehmet Ali Talat, on the suspicion that Ergenekon had wiretapped Erdoğan. Police found recordings of phone conversations Erdoğan had between 1999 and 2004 on a CD seized during the raid.

There were also recordings of İstanbul Mayor Kadir Topbaş; Ankara Mayor Melih Gökçek; ministers Ali Babacan, Hilmi Güler, Egemen Bağış and Cemil Çiçek; businessman Remzi Gür; former UN Special Envoy to Cyprus Alvaro De Soto; aide to Prime Minister Erdoğan Cüneyd Zapsu; and journalists Murat Yetkin and Hakan Aygün.

Additionally, documents seized in a police raid in March at the home of Mustafa Özbek, the jailed chairman of workers’ union Türk Metal, revealed that the Ergenekon terrorist organization established two main centers in the KKTC and Ankara to wiretap conversations, including those of politicians and businessmen. Özbek was arrested in late January as part of the ongoing investigation into Ergenekon, which stands accused of multiple assassinations and attacks designed to trigger an eventual military takeover, working through its links to the state, including the military, the judiciary and the media.

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Gold Lock Enterprise VS Skype

Skype uses SSL which uses electronic certificates and 128 bit encryption (standard for credit card transactions online also) This level of encryption is NOT appropriate for even top secret level communications. How many times have credit card numbers been stolen online?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_Layer_Security

128-bit 2^128 2 multiplied by 2 128 times over. = 339,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (give or take a couple trillion…).

Gold Lock Enterprise uses 4 different encryption methods. One of which is 16,384 Bit Authentication. That is 2 multiplied by 2, 16,384 times over (not just 128 times). This method IS appropriate for top secret level communications. Enterprise uses 16,384 Bit Authentication Elliptic Curve 384 Bits (RSA 7680 Bits Equivalent) AES 256 Bits Diffie Hellman 4096 Bits

AES – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Encryption_Standard Top Secret appropriate

RSA – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA Top Secret appropriate

Diffie Hellman – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffie-Hellman_key_exchange Top Secret appropriate

In addition to this technical “stuff” the facts remain that Skype provides a key to governments for lawful interception (which means all the security in the world in now a mute point) and  Skypes 128 bit encryption has been broken, and hackers now easily intercept their calls.

http://sigillu.wordpress.com/category/technologies/skype/

As you can see Enterprise has significantly higher encryption capabilities than Skype. Skype encrypts just enough to satisfy their customers. Gold Lock takes pride in having the best and highest encryption software on the market. Gold Lock Enterprise is a military grade encryption software. No military uses Skype to relay orders or pass top secret information.

Demos to show spying on mobile IP calls

This screen shot shows the user interface of UCSniff. The user can listen in on a conversation and see the video of two people talking on an IP-based video phone. The two video screens show what each of the video phones is displaying.

(Credit: Viper Lab, Sipera Systems)

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Hotspot sniffer eavesdrops on iPhone in real-time

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“As the private call is in progress, we can see and hear what is happening,” said Jason Ostrom, a developer of UCSniff and director of Viper Labs, the research arm of security firm Sipera Systems. “There’s real-time violation of confidentiality.”

In addition to monitoring voice conversations as they happen, UCSniff can also bug video conferences in real time. Ostrom said he and fellow Viper Labs researcher Arjun Sambamoorthy plan to show those capabilities at Toorcon as well.

With the proliferation of iPhones and other smartphones, plenty of businesses and individuals have sought to save money on roaming charges by routing calls over the internet instead of over carrier networks. Adam Boone, a vice president at Sipera, said one large, unnamed client logs more than 1 million minutes per month in such VoIP calls.

The problem, he added, is that many of the iPhone apps for VoIP calls don’t provide encryption capabilities, making the conversations ripe for eavesdropping. (Sipera plans to unveil a new product to protect such users next week).

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Skype tapping program code released

A software developer who designed a way to tap and record calls made on Skype and other VoIP networks has made the source code of the spying program public, a move he said will allow other programmers to build workarounds to the potential threat. The programmer, Ruben Unteregger, was tasked by his former company ERA IT Solutions to write a Trojan horse program that could tap VoIP calls for the Swiss government.

Apparently, the program bypassed Skype’s heralded encryption process, one that has vexed security officials in Europe multiple times.

In a translated interview, Untregger discussed his rationale for releasing the code.

“The code will be published, it will get analyzed as soon as the binaries got uploaded, signature patterns will be created by anti-virus companies, the malware will be detected, blocked and deleted, if it tries to infect a system,” Untregger said.

Untregger’s motives appear to be genuinely in the interest of private citizens and enterprises that use VoIP services like Skype, as the publicizing of the code makes its use by security agencies redundant, according to a Computer World report. However, making this code available could have negative repercussions if hackers can use it to build even more powerful tapping programs. Other instances of Skype hacking, such as China’s purported monitoring of dissident communication via VoIP programs, gives one pause when considering the public availability of such information.

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Cops’ wiretap tech frayed

CALGARY — Alberta’s top cop says antiquated wiretap technology in the modern-day crime-fighting realm is hampering police investigations.

Western provincial solicitor generals and justice ministers recently met in Saskatoon and joined forces to pressure the feds to bolster laws to remove technological barriers which often give organized criminals an upper hand.

“The technological infrastructure is there, it is just a matter of getting the legislation in place — we believe we can be more effective,” Alberta Solicitor General Fred Lindsay told Sun Media.

“If (criminals) have a communication device and we can’t wiretap, it puts us at a disadvantage.”

Among a list of demands by the ministers is upgrading Criminal Code lawful access provisions to improve police access to information, be it on computer or cellphone — technology which post-dates the creation of current laws.

One recurrent issue is an inability for police to quickly and adequately investigate criminals by tapping into their use of cellphones.

As it is, criminals can buy prepaid, non-traceable cellphones to use in drug deals or other nefarious activities and register them under any name they want, leaving no identifiers which could help police investigations.

There is also no legislation to deal with encryption technology on cellphones.

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TURKEY: IMF MEETING DRAWS LEFT AND RIGHT TOGETHER IN ISTANBUL

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As some groups plan the final touches of their upcoming protest actions, they are taking extensive precautions to evade detection. The anarchist leader, for example, said that at any gathering, participants leave their mobile phones outside the room so that security services can’t use them to eavesdrop on conversations. In arranging to meet a EurasiaNet correspondent, the anarchist leader insisted that an interview not take place near his home or the group’s office. Instead, he chose an ironic meeting point — outside the Benetton store on Istanbul’s busy shopping thoroughfare of Istiklal Caddesi.

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Building in Surveillance

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But that’s not the most serious misuse of a telecommunications surveillance infrastructure. In Greece, between June 2004 and March 2005, someone wiretapped more than 100 cell phones belonging to members of the Greek government — the prime minister and the ministers of defense, foreign affairs and justice.

Ericsson built this wiretapping capability into Vodafone’s products, and enabled it only for governments that requested it. Greece wasn’t one of those governments, but someone still unknown — a rival political party? organized crime? — figured out how to surreptitiously turn the feature on.

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Gold Lock video on YouTube

 

Report: NSA tried to eavesdrop on Congress member

 

The National Security Agency tried to wiretap a member of the U.S. Congress without a warrant, and has engaged in “significant and systemic” illegal surveillance activities in the last few months including e-mail and telephone call interceptions, according to a report this week.

The article in Wednesday’s New York Times said the Obama administration acknowledged there had been abuses but said they had been resolved. The attempted eavesdropping on a congressman came about because he or she was part of a delegation to the Middle East in 2005 or 2006, and was ultimately blocked.

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