TikTok the new Crypto AG? Social Engineering. The oldest form of hacking

When I was in high school I was still learning about white hat hacking, the dark web, and social engineering.  I learned phone freaking the best and you can say I was an old school hacker.  (Phreaking is a slang term coined to describe the activity of a culture of people who study, experiment with, or explore telecommunication systems, such as equipment and systems connected to public telephone networks)

Like a lot of other kids I knew, we were able to get into things fairly easily, you just had to understand the concept of how the systems were built. People built things to function but they didn't give much thought to someone using the system the wrong way. 

Who remembers the US company set up to spy on other countries? So you may already know that this is not a new game. Read this exerpt from the Washington Post:

For more than half a century, governments all over the world trusted a single company to keep the communications of their spies, soldiers and diplomats secret.
The company, Crypto AG, got its first break with a contract to build code-making machines for U.S. troops during World War II. Flush with cash, it became a dominant maker of encryption devices for decades, navigating waves of technology from mechanical gears to electronic circuits and, finally, silicon chips and software.

But what none of its customers ever knew was that Crypto AG was secretly owned by the CIA in a highly classified partnership with West German intelligence. These spy agencies rigged the company’s devices so they could easily break the codes that countries used to send encrypted messages.
Shocked? Me either. Social engineering, I learned from hacking books in the 90's, could be as simple as picking up a piece of paper in the garbage that has someone's login or password information written down, or more updated with the times, using mobile applications to get users personal info to access their personal information or maybe even sell their ad profile. Who has access to all your personal account info? Owners of mobile applications. Owners like of... oh let's just say TikTok, or Facebook. I know what information you are privileged to and can influence because I have made social media applications myself and am a Google Certified Developer.

Are people still trusting HTC devices? I still see them in people hands. Does anyone remember that three executives at Taiwanese smartphone giant HTC Corporation arrested? 

Back on August 31, 2013, three top HTC product designers were arrested in Taiwan on suspicion of stealing trade secrets and submitting fraudulent expense claims after HTC filed a complaint with the Taiwan Investigation Bureau. The trio allegedly planned to set up a competing design company and stole trade secrets related to HTC’s upcoming “Sense 6.0 UI” design. In addition, they allegedly submitted false commission fees from an external design firm, although the design work was performed in-house.

Do we trust HTC devices not to steal American Information or social trending influence?
Was tiktok a spy software operation to leak to almost all America's youth? 

An additional layer of intrigue and scandal came to light when reports surfaced that the arrested executives were allegedly passing on the confidential information to the Chengdu city government in China (although it is unclear thus far whether the executives succeeded in passing off any secrets). According to these reports, the Chengdu government was prepared to pay for the start-up costs of the competing company in exchange for the HTC trade secrets.

The arrest of the HTC executives will likely be the first high-profile test of Taiwan’s recently toughened criminal Trade Secrets Act. Earlier this year, Taiwan amended the Act because of increasing concern about unlawful trade secret disclosure to competing companies in China and South Korea. The amendment implemented tougher penalties against offenders who illegally acquire, use, or leak commercial secrets, including increased jail time and fines.
The act calls for even steeper penalties for international industrial espionage. In cases where the perpetrator steals trade secrets for the purpose of using them in foreign jurisdictions, the amended act provides for up to 10 years in prison and fines of up to TWD $50 million.

U.S. employers who recruit Taiwanese talent should take note of these latest developments. Taiwan’s passage of a stiffer trade secrets law, followed by a high-profile prosecution, could signal that Taiwan is getting more serious about going after suspected theft of secrets from Taiwanese companies. U.S. companies who have operations in China, South Korea, or other Asian countries should pay particular attention that their subsidiaries and affiliates are taking appropriate steps to ensure that new Taiwanese hires are not bringing with them the trade secrets or confidential information of their former employer, and that they aren’t poaching Taiwanese talent to exploit their knowledge of their former employer’s secrets.

This is one of my favorite stories. If you are interested then this is the juiciest of all.

In 1946, a group of Russian children from the Vladimir Lenin All-Union Pioneer Organisation (sort of a Soviet scouting group) presented a carved wooden replica of the Great Seal of the United States to Averell Harriman, the U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union.
The gift, a gesture of friendship to the USSR's World War II ally, was hung in the ambassador’s official residence at Spaso House in Moscow. It stayed there on a wall in the study for seven years until, through accident and a ruse, the State Department discovered that the seal was more than a mere decoration.
It was a bug.

The Soviets had built a listening device—dubbed “The Thing” by the U.S. intelligence community—into the replica seal and had been eavesdropping on Harriman and his successors the whole time it was in the house. “It represented, for that day, a fantastically advanced bit of applied electronics,” wrote George Kennan, the ambassador at the time the device was found. “I have the impression that with its discovery the whole art of intergovernmental eavesdropping was raised to a new technological level.”

With all of this information we are only exposed to the surface. Only those who get caught are then known, how many companies are shell organizations of spy networks stealing every piece of information and picture we put online? 

American companies have even been exposed, what about our enemies? What would they do if they got all the information they needed? They may already have. 

Jeremy D Higgs

Follow us on www.netdiatom.org
Some information taken from the Washington Post and Atlas Obscura