 Geologies were a security company located in New Jersey on the border with New York and With me are my two associates Michael Glasser who made his presentation on physical security and Jeff who only goes by the name of Jeff You the thing you the thing I'd like to go over some of the things that people should be aware of concerning doing sweeps of Telephones for wiretaps and rooms for bugs because a lot of people are not aware of what the reality of the situation is There are certain types of tools that should be used for sweeps There's different ways that telephones can be tapped as many different ways their rooms can be bugged There are many different types of people who get bugged and some who don't There are corporate spies who try to infiltrate your infrastructure You have to be concerned with the spy shop toys that are out there you should know what to do if you suspect that you've been bugged or wiretapped and a Successful sweep has to be planned out a certain way Now one of the most important things to think about is why would somebody want to wiretap your phone conversation or bug your Room conversation And the reason is generally because the more valuable the information that you have to somebody the more valuable of a target You are so for example if you're involved in major litigation and somebody knowing what you're talking to your attorney about It would be a value to them. You're a good candidate for somebody to debug your wiretap Many times on a smaller scale Even in family businesses problems crop up and people are trying to spy on each other Everybody always likes to be privy to specialized information So I'll start off by telling you a quick story Number of years ago when I got into the business a woman called me up And she told me that she owned a funeral home with her family and the family was having a lot of problems with the Division of the business and who's gonna take over the business from one of their own relatives that were deceased So she believed that her house was Bugged and the phones were tapped and she called in our sweep team to come in and do the sweep for When I went to her house, she greeted me at the door, and I couldn't see any light behind her I mean this woman was so big. She was like four people of my size standing together And she was in kind of a questionable neighborhood and but we were there already So I started talking to her and we made arrangements for us to take care of the sweep Make the long story short. We've swept her house. We've checked all of her phone lines She was concerned that a family member or family members might have been listing in on her conversations for business purposes Most people don't know that Very few sweeps actually turn up devices now I've got a prize for whoever can tell me The number of times the average professional sleep team in percentages five percent ten percent twenty percent Finds a sweep finds a bug one one percent Lansing speakers for the man in the front row courtesy of death. I'm not it. Not if me they're It's probably about one percent of the time that you actually turn up working bugs or actual Equipment still connected to the telephone line if there's an active sweep going on getting back to the story We told the woman that everything was clear that there was nothing in her house And nothing looked like it had been placed there and she had nothing to worry about And that's when things got ugly She said to me Could I check her uterus? Because she believed that somebody had put a bug inside of her uterus now. Are you married to her now? You know I I might have thought about it if she looked you know a little bit different But for this woman, you know this woman got on one of those scales It gives you your fortune and it said one at a time, please So I Wasn't going for that so I quickly assured her that we do not sweep uteruses Then she said there was one other possibility. She said she had a dog It was a really nice dog a little beetle and the beagle would follow her around all the time She thought this was very strange and she thought that maybe somebody had literally put a bug up the dog's ass And I trained the dog to follow her around the house so they could overhear her conversations that he loved chicken At that point it was time to go Tools used for sweeps I'm going to Go through some of these things rather quickly because of the time element involved But it's very important that when you hire a sweep team that the team have the proper tools in order to sweep the premises If anybody shows up at your company or your home or wherever you're having a sweep done And everything is contained in one briefcase And there's a couple of lights and a few switches and like what we call a magic wand and they do what's called a rain Dance where they walk around the place going like this and they're usually done in about 15 minutes That person is not doing the right job for you clearly that is not going to find bugs and wiretaps These are the types of tools that a person should have a time domain reflectometer Near field detector nonlinear junction detector Spectrum analyzer and a oscilloscope and they must be willing to do the physical inspection very important What's a time domain reflectometer? The time domain reflectometer is basically a cable tester that is rather sophisticated That sends a 2,500 foot pulse signal down the line and Is able to tell you every break that there is in the telephone line Which normally you would expect to find several extensions You might find the telephone closet on the second floor other places till you trace the phone down to the demarcation point That's what a time domain reflectometer does if you count the number of extensions that are supposed to be there And you look on your time domain reflectometer and you find that there's extra sine waves between your connection at the telephone block Where the demarcation point and the extension you're using you need to investigate further and find out if there's something else on the phone near field detector a Near field detector is basically a radio transmitter locator, which is used to pick up the signal from a radio transmitter and translate it into a Usually it's a a graph or a little meter that's telling you whether you're warmer or getting colder when you're trying to track down the bug Sometimes they use LEDs that get brighter and brighter red as you get closer to the radio frequency device But this is something that helps you locate the location of the device within the room This presentation goes into a great detail with a near field detector. I'll be all day here just talking about one piece of equipment so I'll let you Look at that on the presentation material next piece of equipment is very important to discuss is the nonlinear junction detector Now many of you here. I'm sure know what a nonlinear junction detector is or at least what a nonlinear junction is But let me just explain very briefly When you're doing the sweep if you get to the portion of this wall here between the two exit doors If you're trying to find a device one of the things that you want to do in addition to a radio frequency sweep Is take a nonlinear junction detector and look for can anybody tell me Whoever said that first Somebody over here Why I was caught. Oh fuck. I need one of those my laptop's fucked up man. I don't throw it over that one But I knew that also from Defconn You get one of those just for being speaking. Yeah, absolutely. That's what I've heard you're looking for nonlinear junctions, which are basically Transistors and diodes and other things that are placed in an array that are used typically as bugging devices Of course, they're also the same things that are used in calculators or all types of electronic devices But typically if you're looking between these two doors, there might be steel beams There might be aluminum beams in there that might be metal nails in the studs And that is going to come up on the nonlinear junction detector as the third harmonic, which you can ignore The second harmonic is what you have to be concerned with and that's the list of equipment that could be Bugs different type of radio frequency emanating transmitters wireless cameras and things like that The nonlinear junction detector actually takes a microwave signal sends it out to the wall Pings the wall if there's anything there, it's going to get a signal back You're going to hear it audibly and you'd be able to see it on the meter and that's going to be able to tell you There's something in that wall that doesn't belong there and again It's one more tool that's being used to to help you find bugs Anybody who tells you that they have a one-size-fits-all kit one toolbox It's inside of a briefcase or something that people are really pulling a little over your eyes Spectrum analyzer Spectrum analyzer is used to sweep across every band of radio frequency that is known to man and Every couple years somebody puts out a better quality product or better quality receiving antenna that receives a higher and higher Frequency that many people may not be used to a couple of years ago was unheard of to have anything over five gighertz today That's nothing so spectrum analyzer is going to sweep from the very lowest of radio frequency Frequencies to the very highest and in this way you're going to be able to audibly listen in and hear Every single sound that's in there Well, that means you're going to be listening to a lot of things because we know at any one time There's many radio signals that you can get there's AM signals There's FM signals although I noticed in Las Vegas There aren't really quite as many radio stations as we have back in New York and New York It goes from dial to dial in Las Vegas aren't quite as many but this room is at any one time It's flooded with RF energy everybody in here probably has a cellular phone a wireless card a pager and many people have all three. Yes, sir typically 40 gigs Would you like a business card sir? I Have contract back in my room The spectrum analyzer though when it's coupled with a program that was designed by a company called information security Associates located in Stanford Connecticut They have a program that you put onto your laptop connect to the spectrum analyzer and it does all the work for you it really separates all of the signals that are airborne in the room and might be harmless signals like radio and television signals in the normal broadcast and things of that nature and It separates for you any suspect frequencies that are unusually strong or frequencies You could look at more closely then by listening to your headphones and putting in known sounding device You can find out if there is some type of bug or transmitter hidden in the room oscilloscopes Always handy to have always handy to have oscilloscopes Because many times when you're doing the sweep you find things and you have no idea what they are You might find a box that has some flying leads coming off of the back of it have no idea what it is So between an oscilloscope and an amplifier you can test anything that you find and make sure that it's not a bug Or a wire tap or any other type of eavesdropping device Although I would say don't try this at home because for many people they have no idea what a hundred and ten volts are or 220 volts and There have been people who've really gotten themselves in a lot of trouble by connecting devices to very high-powered Electricity and they find out the hard way that it really was a new bug or wire tap physical inspection This is probably the most important part of a sweep and it comes down to the human element comes down to having experience and dealing with these types of things And it comes down to being willing to get dirty If we were to do a sweep of this room, we would have to get on pretty high ladders and Open up every ceiling tile and go through the entire suspended ceiling in order to properly check Because all of the technology can tell you if something is radiating it can tell you if something is on now But it doesn't mean that there isn't something up in the ceiling that's turned off And as soon as the sweep is over somebody isn't going to press a button and turn it back on so it starts transmitting again So it's very important to do the physical inspection I mean you get a couple of people to do it to sweep a room of this size before a board meeting You would probably need to have six to eight technicians to really cover the room carefully And you have to check everything you have to take off the electrical outlets, and you have to test the electrical outlets for What are we looking for? No, no electricity is not the answer. We hope there's electricity in the power Looking for something a little different What is it Infrared you said Infinity transmitter now that's on a telephone That's it. Who said that? Come on up here You better not be giving them a couple carrier current also known as the baby monitor, sorry All courtesy of defton Carrier current and sub-carrier current are the frequencies that are used on the electrical system shared by a common transformer That we most people know as a baby monitor If you any of you that have children who've grown up around children You know if you turn the baby monitor on near the crib you take the receiver you plug it into another outlet downstairs When the baby wakes up boom you can hear the baby screaming and crying In fact my baby is so loud that we didn't need a baby monitor because even with the doors closed We could hear him without the baby monitor But the fact is that a baby monitor is a great bug and one of the reasons that it is this first of all It's powered off of the electricity, so it's going to run Forever it's not like a battery operated device typical bugs only last a day or so any of these things that you see in the catalogs That you buy for it, you know, $25 or $50 or things that you buy in the spy shop They're $5,000 they're the same things as the $25 bugs all of these things really only last a day or so If you're lucky so by plugging into the power you have virtually unlimited power to keep the device running But because it shares a common transformer, which means if you live on a block of say a dozen houses It's very likely that all 12 houses are sharing one transmitter on the pole. I'm sorry one transformer on the pole So that means that if you put the transmitter in your friend's house and you throw it behind his bed Plug it into the wall and push the bed back you can take the receiver bring it over to your house Plug it into the wall and when he has friends over Friends over you'll be able to hear everything that's going on for as long as you want So this is something that's very important. So again, if we were to sweep the room That's one of the most important things is that we have a device that we connect into the electricity The test to make sure that there's no RF being transmitted over the subcarrier of carrier current. That was a very good answer Yes, you mean in your own house Well, if you if you pick up a sound like that and you know that there's something on the electricity now You have to check all of the outlets and you have to check it everything more closely I thought you were asking me how would you know if your baby monitor was working and not if it was your baby? I was gonna say you don't have children When you have children you learn what that what sound they make you get to know their crime But no, it's certainly a good question But the fact is that when you plug in a baby monitor even innocently You may overhear your neighbors talking in fact a technique that a number of burglars do is they drive around with a scanner And they try to pick up on the wireless baby monitors Trying to listen into houses to hear if somebody's home and if they feel that nobody is home And that's more likely that they're going to be able to successfully burglarize the house But it's very important that everybody understand that with a physical inspection You really do that need to get on your knees get under the desk get dirty Get up in the ceilings and you'd be surprised what we find in the ceilings And people install things up there that leave Snapple bottles up there and God only knows what but sometimes you know you Get very lucky if you find that somebody has a bug there We got a call in from an electronics company multi-billion dollar international firm. They had reason to believe That the place was being bugged and the phones were being tapped So the guy tells me he says when you come to my office He said we'll talk outside of the office, but I want you to meet me in the office And I want to take you around and you're going to be Bob Anderson Like okay, I'll play along So I got to his office and you know real friendly guy like the typical typical guy you see in most conventions Shakes my hand. He's like Bob. How are you? This is Bob Anderson the guy was really overdoing the role playing so much It was getting me nervous I was afraid that you know somebody would pick up on the fact that this wasn't my name or maybe I had something with My initials on it like a pen or a notepad or something and my initials are not be a and We looked around the place and before we That's an asshole security is handling So as we as we walked around the room in this multi-billion dollar That's billion dollar with a bee company's office. I saw little black boxes Put on to the ceiling with Velcro and as I walked around from room to room in the ceiling weren't like this They're pretty much nine-foot seal. It's typical of many offices The little black boxes with little telltale holes pointing down in key places like the president's office in the conference room in certain hallways even in the bathroom and This is without bringing any electronic devices or any sweep teams or anything else This was just my initial walk-through and meeting with the client So we went off premises to talk about this which is really the way you have to do You can't obviously talk about a bugging problem in the area that might be bug But you'd be surprised at how many people call our office in the first question I say to them are you calling me from the telephone? You think you have a problem with and everybody tells me the same thing. Yeah, I guess I am is that okay? It's not okay. You have to call me back from another phone You have to be in another area and preferably you know a digital cellular phone preferably not even in your own car Maybe a public phone someplace is probably a better suggestion As we're looking around when we came in with our sweep team We found out that they had somebody had placed all of these bugs up in the ceiling all around the room They were just very simply microphones going to an amplifier Going back to a tape recorder and who was doing all the bugging because that's the fun part of finding the bugs Is finding out who put it there after all just finding the bugs isn't good enough You have to find out you're at least try find out who put the bug there. Well, it was their tenant a multi-million dollar with an M electronics firm that had bugged the office and They had also attached a telephone tape recorder and a butt set to the telephone system in the building Which they had control over the demarcation point where the phone system came into the building and clearly they were listening in on Conversations they were listening in on telephone Conversations as well and it really didn't take a lot of sophisticated equipment the company immediately hired a law firm that had to Retired us attorneys that were partners in the firm called in the FBI and a couple of FBI guys met me in the parking lot and They said well, what do we have here and explain the situation to them? They came in the building. They climbed up the ladder. They looked down and they said yep, that's a bug What are we going to do now? so the next thing that they did was they They came in and They obtained forensic evidence and and the company that had done this to them was going to be prosecuted because as most people probably know Why are tapping or bugging is a violation of the federal omnibus crime control actor? What's known as title 3? Even your possession of a bugging device is is considered a crime. It's considered a very serious crime Woman called my office the other day. She said can you tap my phone? I said no, that's illegal We can't do that. She said but I heard that private investigators can do it She heard that in the movies And when I saw Charlie's Angels I saw a tuba that had an iris scan device built into it so they could read the person's iris scan You remember the first Charlie's Angels the three girls go to the door and those little love those little outfits and they're playing different insurance So people have a lot of myths and misconceptions about what you can and can't do and you really can't do bugging But certainly hasn't prevented people from trying spy shop can do whatever the hell they want spy shop down the street from the From the airport I'm sure they have all kinds of devices that they sell from behind the counter that do different types of bugging I certainly would not want to be caught with something like that Signs that your offices are bugged. Well, this is very important because a lot of people would say to me Well, how do I know if we need to call in a professional sweep team to come to my office my home? My car my boat my plane or whatever device or location or building that they feel that they're having a problem with and The answers might surprise you a gentleman asked me before he said every day when he comes home from school A white van is parked across the street from his house and this has been going on for a month Starts to get scary Then he says every time he picks up the telephone He already has a hollow sound on it without a dial tone as if somebody has already picked up the phone And the phone's been off the hook a little while, but they haven't heard the warning tone yet I don't know. I guess it depends what he's doing, but typically the fact that you hear clicking on the phone I'm not putting her to sleep in there It's okay. It's okay. I was just checking I was gonna see if I if I was putting her to sleep I try to sell one of those tapes that people would play and put them to sleep and I listened to my presentation the The biggest problem is not clicking on the phone or spurious sounds that you might hear on the telephone because we've all Experienced it from time to time you've been experiencing it on a wireless phone if you're on an analog network Telephones by nature of the way they're designed the connections a number of wires a number of subscribers and things There's constantly noises on the phone and I don't tell anybody who hears a click or hears You know any kind of strange sound on their phone that the telephones are tapped because that really doesn't mean anything That's probably just normal telephone company problems But if other people know your confidential business or other people are finding out your professional trade secrets You've got a problem If you're doing things within the confines of your home or your office and there's only you and one other person who knows about it Or maybe it's just you Then it's very likely that if the product that you're trying to bring to the market gets there a day or a month before yours And it's basically the same thing a little bit lower price and it's already been Patented or they have a patent pending or something It's very likely that somebody has compromised your telephone system where they're bugging your rooms and they're listening to your conversation That's a good way to know that you have a problem because other people are finding out your confidential business It's a multi-billion dollar underground industry in the United States And there are many people who engage in all sorts of illegal wiretapping and eavesdropping and attempt to get information It's going to be valuable to them Secret meetings and did seem to be less than secret This certainly applies to a unions during contract negotiations Because many times people on both sides of the contract negotiation are trying to find out what the other people are doing So it's very important to make sure that if you're involved in important negotiations litigation where there's a lot of money involved It's very important to find out If the room is safe and if things are clear and it's okay to talk with other people in the room Some sounds however might give you pause for concern on your telephone So as I said before my disclaimer is just regular clicks and pops and occasional noise is really not much But an amateur eavesdropper who is trying to connect a butt-set to that little great box a telephone interface box outside Your house that'll definitely make a clicking sound when the person puts those alligator clips on the contact So you may hear something like that if a person is attempting to do that Professional eavesdroppers who have equipment in place typically it doesn't make any noise and you usually don't hear anything So it's important to make sure that you test the room properly and test the phone lines properly To ensure that there isn't any type of device on the line You notice static popping or scratching on the phone lines Well, this is many times caused by capacitive discharge when people are connecting things on to your telephone lines Everybody knows our favorite store radio shack sells all kinds of things called tele-secretary telephone assistant and various products that work by Detecting a drop in the line voltage when an analog phone Is picked up off the hook the line voltage shops this little black box kicks in Triggers a tape recorder the tape recorder starts running when you hang up the phone It turns off the tape recording device for a while. So things like that maybe on your telephone line and There may be also some type of wireless transmitter that when you pick up the phone It starts to kick off and it starts making some noises so very unusual sounds Static popping vacuum sounds dead sounds on the telephone or something that you should be concerned about gentlemen before mentioned an infinity tap who'd said that over there Did you say that about the infinity have Gentlemen said before when we're talking about the carrier current for the electrical lines could it be an infinity tap An infinity tap is also known as a harmonica tap And this is something that got its roots back in the old days when answering machines had a little box You had to carry with you and you had to beep it into the telephone in that little tone would signal the device that it was you Was typically only one tone it was pretty easy to figure out how to get into somebody's answering machine that way, but that was the good old days and That little box would would trip the Infinity transmitter to start transmitting your conversations from the phone line to the eavesdropper So an infinity transmitter if it's being clicked on by a person who is monitoring you and they know You've just come home. That's the sound that you might hear coming on suddenly on the telephone as well If sounds are coming from your phone's handset when it's hung up. I Would say you probably have a big problem A lot of times people put in what's called a hook switch bypass or basically what a lot of people call the hot wire the microphone And what that does is is when the phone is hung up the microphone that's present in the telephone handset actually turns into a room microphone and Broadcasts with radio frequency kindly powered by the amount of voltage inside of the telephone it transmits your conversations in the room Even with the phone hung up. So even if the telephone is on the hook It still could be transmitting your conversations in the room And if you hang up your phone and sounds come out of the phone while it's hung up It's really something that that bears further investigation Your phone often rings and nobody is there well That could be your girlfriend calling if your wife answered the phone It could be a telemarketer calling because you know how these automatic telephone Systems work they just keep calling you to death until they get somebody on the phone and then they have somebody on the line Or it could be that there is a harmonic of bug or infinity Transmitters I had mentioned before being used It also could be a fax machine or it could be a modem calling your number by mistake I was listening to my office fax machine listening for a ringing sound The phone rings and rings and rings and no fax comes through then our main line in the office rings And I realized the person's been calling our fax number first and that happens quite frequently If you can hear a tone on the line when the phone is on the hook We use an external amplifier that we plug into that Then that's one of the ways that you would attempt to find a recorder interface like the device I was talking about before the black box that sold the radio shack in other places Your AMR FM radio has suddenly developed strange interference There was a movie once where a bunch of people are in a car and they're going someplace and one of the guys has a transmitter on him and As they're tuning the radio in the car, they're listening to a station All of a sudden they start getting all of the feedback and hearing noise because somebody in the car was wearing a transmitter And many cheaper transmitters, especially the types that amateurs use do broadcast on either the very low end or the very high end of the FM band So just by fooling around with your radio, you may be able to pick up an amateurs Bug that's transmitting on the FM band You may find parts of the band that are very quiet and that might indicate to you that there is a Transmitter nearby that's actually overpowering, you know, 99 X or whatever the big radio station is out here and It's so powerful in a small area that it can actually overload your radio and be much louder than the commercial stations that are on there But if your AM or FM radio starts acting very strangely, it might be worthwhile to we'll find out what's going on I mentioned the car radio Same thing with your television your television typically on UHF channels if you're using an antenna to bring in those Bring in those signals many times that can pick up many types of bugs that may be present in the room or in your house You've been a victim of a burglary, but nothing was taken Well, a lot of people who are watching the lockpicking contest know The Michael was able to pick those locks in three seconds, right? Have we seen that lost anyway because I was drunk After about 14 beers Michael was still able to pick the locks in about three seconds and change Which is pretty good So you really want to have very high security locks on your doors, especially, you know Sensitive areas are getting into your house the regular types of locks many people have are very easy to pick It would be simple for somebody who knows what they're doing or even somebody who doesn't know what they're doing But given a little bit of time and patience They're able to pick open the lock get into the house place the device and get out without actually taking something So if you come into your house You find out that a lot of things have been moved or if you go to your office and there's white drop ceiling dust on the floor On top of your desk. There's a pretty good chance the gentleman the front is shaking his head You know what I'm talking about. There's a pretty good chance somebody's been up in the ceiling Now maybe it was just the guy fixing the air conditioner last night after you left for work And the air conditioner usually breaks down when it's you know the hottest But it's always worth it's always worth taking a look at there could be hidden camera up there There could be a bug up there of some kind as well Same situation with electrical wall plates if the electrical plates look like they're off-center They've been moved recently or they've been painted over and now all of a sudden the pain has been broken off And somebody's taken the plate off. That's also another good indication Somebody may have hidden something inside of your electrical socket You might look for a dime-sized discoloration on the wall or the ceiling which might Indicate the existence of a hidden bug which could be placed underneath the wallpaper It could be placed on a wall and then glued onto the wall and painted over a Lot of people don't recommend accepting gifts anybody who got any of those wireless Cards for their laptop for me a few minutes ago You never know Actually, no those were all from DEF CON there and seal packages. They're not for me All the more Use use them at your own risk But if somebody trust Jeff Moss If somebody has given you a desk radio an alarm clock a lamp a TV Boombox CD player and so on there is the possibility that device may may contain some type of bugging device And you may really want to check it out before you accept it and put it on your desk So that you're broadcasting your conversation to the person A lot of people don't realize how easy it is to bug somebody and how easy it is to record conversations or overhear what people are saying One of the easiest ways of doing it I'm sure I'm not telling anybody anything that they don't know but just for the purposes of this discussion If a person takes a voice-activated tape recorder They drill a tiny hole on the side of their briefcase And they put the recorder inside of the briefcase and they lock the briefcase with that high-security combination lock that most of our briefcases have you could go to a meeting and Inadvertently leave your briefcase behind so if I'm the first vendor And actually I never saw that episode if you if you leave a briefcase and The briefcase is closed people might try to open it most people wouldn't even try or if they did try if it was locked They probably aren't going to be able to get past that That lock that would record whoever's coming in after you so let's say you're trying to sell something to something your appointments at 10 o'clock It's over at 11 your competitor comes in 11 your next competitor comes in at 12 at 1 o'clock You call up the person you have the point with and you say you know what I forgot my briefcase going to come by and pick it up And you can combine to pick up your briefcase and you would have overheard the conversations and prices and proprietary information That your competitors have given to people. It's completely illegal to do that just so everybody knows It doesn't it doesn't stop a lot of people but some people don't understand the the rule of thumb is in most states If you're a party to the conversation, it's okay to record it if you're in the room It's okay to record it, but there are some states like Maryland anybody ever heard of Linda trip No, I don't have any more prizes to give out but That's what happened with Linda trip She had made a telephone recording of Monica Lewinsky and she was in Maryland and Maryland's is a two-party consent state So the fact that there weren't both parties consent to the recording what she did was in violation of the law But it certainly won't stop a lot of people from doing that The thing you have to watch out for is people who might leave their cell phone behind Anybody ever forget their cell phone someplace? Well cell phones especially the kind that are the non-clam shell type the kind that are like the Nokia phones that are just the flat phones Many times these phones if you turn the phone on auto answer if you turn off the ringer and Then if you plug it into the AC adapter you throw it behind the couch You have probably one of the best bugs in the world because most bugs only transmit a couple hundred feet at best But this is now on the telephone system. So you could call your phone. That's been hidden behind the couch It's not going to ring. It's going to automatically answer. It doesn't work with clamshell style phones I was to keep that in mind You're going to be able to hear everything that the person is saying and everything that's going on in our room If you have it connected to the electricity you're going to be able to do that for a long time So somebody leaves their cell phone in your office. I Don't know if I want to check to make sure it's off Maybe you just want to put the phone in a box and leave it out by the front door with the receptionist What about handheld like a palm pilot or something? Oh, yeah, absolutely I mean a lot of the devices come with Recording devices built into them a lot of phones I have a Motorola phone and that phone has a built-in recording device that lets you record up to maybe two minutes of Conversation on the chip in the phone so anything that's electronic certainly has the capabilities by the knowledgeable people to Adapt it and make it into a recording device or a transmitting device But some of the things just come from the factory like that Other things you might want to look for in your office is like a smoke detector a clock a lamp or an exit sign These things are many times placed and they have cameras hidden in them and the camera could be recording everything That's going on I had a client who called me will call a mr. C And this person has a 190 foot motor sale yacht I can't even tell you how many tens of millions of dollars that cost And one day his secretary called me up and she said you know work concerned that the office might be bug She said how much you're going to charge us to sweep the office. This is a long time ago So let's say I told it was about $3,000 Next day she called me up. She said it was too much. He couldn't afford it 190 foot motor sale $3,000 to sweep the office of a guy who owns many companies and should be concerned about his competitors and other people Two weeks later. I get a call back from a secretary again. He's in jail He was arrested by the authorities for you know various types of racketeering and things like that And he thought he was being very slick Now a lot of people will say to me if there is a title 3 wiretap Are you able to find it and the answer is basically no if the wiretap is coming from the central office Or a wiretap nest and it's outside of your office. There really isn't any way For anything that anyone has that I've ever even heard of to detect that and if anybody tells you there is Find somebody else because it just doesn't exist. However in his office because they call us to do a sweep in post arrest of Mr. See What we found was that over his desk There were cameras installed to read everything that was being written down on his desk because what he used to do Thinking he was very slick, but he would write a note on the yellow piece of paper Leave the cash, you know by the mailbox and he would slide it across to somebody sitting on the other side of the table And the camera that was about six feet above his desk picked up everything that he had written down So sometimes in the case of a law enforcement wiretap or law enforcement bugging There's also hidden microphones that are picking up conversations of the room So that has a presence that has radio frequency energy that could be detected in the location There could be cameras there again physical objects that are in their room that could be detected as well However, if there's nothing like that there and it's just coming from the central office And that's usually the most common type of the title three wiretap from law enforcement. We can't find it and nobody else can Yes, sir That's a very good question gentleman asked if the equipment that we find if it's a government wiretap It's distinguishable from the commercial quality or private investigator a spy shop type of Bugging devices usually it is it usually is distinguishable for example the federal government uses those NAGRA recorders Very expensive for recorders. Maybe some people are familiar with them They use some devices that are typically more technical than what you might find at the local best buy a radio shack for tape recording But now you get to the really the biggest heart of the question is What do you do if you find something there and the person is on under some type of government surveillance? Well from our standpoint the first thing we try to do is know who our clients are We typically work for large companies and we work for corporations that are really looking to protect themselves from their competitors Or people trying to eavesdrop on them, but we always get calls from guys who you know have Have strange accents and they look like they would be a cast member for your walk on part of the Sopranos Calling us up and having us meet them at their body shop or at a place like Bada Bing or something like that Those are always the nice appointments. We don't get to them and The person will assure me that they have no concern of Government monitoring of what they're doing and if they run a clean place and everything else five minutes into the conversation You find out that their cousin got in trouble for something, you know and did 20 years and this and that so You know, we really we don't seek that type of client out if a person is under government surveillance If the person is under the surveillance of law enforcement, then they really have more problems than we can help them with Just as a follow-up to the rest of your question I believe that if I was to find a wiretap and if we're bugging device And I knew or had reason to know that it was placed by law enforcement My removal of that would probably be considered obstruction of justice and you know what for the price of the sweep It's just not worth going there You can't show the person that it's there I mean you're doing a diagnostic test if the person disconnects it, I guess it's at their own best It's really not something that you know as a corporate person or as a security person You really want to become involved with because it could mean a lot of trouble. Is there another question over here? Yes, sir It's a very good question The gentleman asked if you were to take readings off of the telephone and come away with certain baseline readings in terms of Voltage and other signs of how the telephone is working Would it indicate the possibility of changes to those readings when the test is made in the future? Would that mean that the phone may have been tapped and that's exactly what we do in most cases? We store all of the information from our readings whether the radio readings are radio frequency readings from the room And that spans of course, you know many many hundreds of if not thousands of frequencies Readings on the telephone voltage and things of that nature and all of that information is stored Usually big corporate clients call you back frequently to do sweeps It may be done on a quarterly basis if we're lucky We may get it done every year when they're having an important board meeting or something like that But certainly making a comparison Helps you do the sweep much more efficiently and helps you identify any types of problems that might exist on the phone Yes, sir in the blue shirt It's a very good question the question is how do you identify if you're dealing with a wireless device? How do you identify who put that device in? How do you trace a wireless device and the answer is that it's difficult to do There's no scientific way of tracing where that device is coming from but you know there are a lot of clever people here and I know from talking to a lot of you that I've met that there are a lot of people who would probably figure out some pretty good Ways of finding out who put that there. I guess it really depends on what you're doing a quick example would be you find a Bug in your house and you're going through difficult marital times So chances are it's probably the husband or wife that put it there Where's it going to be it's typically in the basement if it's a wireless device It may be connected to a receiver in the person's trunk of their car You have to look around a little bit and certainly no sweep is complete without going outside the building and around the building looking for Other devices like that, but certainly tracking down a transmitting device and who put it there is difficult But you know if you do find one you want to handle it carefully You might want to put it in a plastic bag like the police would handle any type of forensic evidence In case you get to the point where you're trying to prove who put it there And it's a question of fingerprints and issues like that, but it can be done. It can be done if a person has sir, if a person has a Device in there that Has been sitting there for a while and it's been abandoned by the eavesdropper and you know the person's not there with the Receiver anymore that's going to be a lot harder to find them and you know people that do bugging They have a cardinal rule and it's called don't go back Okay, don't go back means don't go back to get the device You know you planted a bug and maybe of course you $500 from the spy shop And you know now you're done with your operation and a lot of people want to break into the office again or get in through Social engineering for the premises one more time and we cover that $500 bug and use it for another day But most people who are pretty smart in the intelligence community No, don't go back for the bug because that's one of the ways that a lot of people get caught sir Well a PBX system of course is a much more involved telephone system And it has a lot of features built into it that make it more difficult for someone to tap Because the PBX itself the private branch exchange the box that's downstairs in the telephone room is Acting as a decoder for all the information which is digital So it's much harder for somebody to tap of course a lot of people do the tap from the analog portion of it Or they do it from from just the person's room But one of the most important considerations when you have a big telephone system is Knowing the parameters for how it's set up in a very similar way to a network For example, we find many times we go to a big company that the telephone vendor has unlimited access to dial up from the outside monitor every single extension in the building and listen to everything that's going on and You know that's done for diagnostic purposes and things like that, but certainly that presents a Quite a few difficulties by allowing someone to do that So you have to really order your telephone system You have to find out what type of permissions are out there and maybe restrict those permissions I really don't recommend allowing your vendor to listen into your your phone calls from the outside It's certainly something that you would have to watch out for and people are always inventing new things I've been given the get the hell off the stage sign. You're done talking So I want to thank all of you for your attention and certainly if you have any questions I'd be happy to answer them on the side