DEF CON 22 - Dr. Philip Polstra - Am I Being Spied On?

Is someone spying on you? This talk will present several low-tech ways that you can detect even high-tech surveillance. Topics covered will include: detecting surveillance cameras with your cell phone, signs that you are under physical surveillance, detecting active and passive bugs with low cost devices, and detecting devices implanted inside computers, tablets, and cell phones.

[butteredtoast]

"Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not out to get you."

[spambot]

just a reminder: stalkers and law enforcement are not mutually exclusive categories. Police officers commit domestic violence at a higher rate than the general population, and leaving an abusive relationship with a police officer carries additional risks given the resources they have access to (including the fact that they're automatically trusted by most domestic violence shelters).

[Willam_J]

The tips about determining you are being followed or surveiled are somewhat useful, but most of the information about detecting bugs is relatively useless unless someone is spying on you with a Mr. Microphone. Simply using a wide band RF detector with a decent frequency range will catch 99% of all bugs. Bugs don’t typically use frequencies above 2.4GHz and most are in the VHF or low UHF range. Anything over 1GHz is nearly useless over any usable range and when you’re spying on someone, you want some range between them and you. If you’re paranoid enough to want a 10+ GHz sweep of your home or office, just call an experienced company in. Also, if someone is really spying on you, you can use it to your own advantage. As long as they don’t know that you know about their bugs, you can feed fictitious information to them. If it’s the government trying to gather information about you, talk about how you would never do something they suspect you of or talk about something they might be interested in, but you aren’t doing and they can’t prove. The point is to confuse them and give yourself time to ‘clean up’. If it’s corporate espionage, you can discuss bogus projects or make wild claims about your new products and throw them off course. Finding the bug is only half the battle. Deciding what to do with it is the other half.

[AustinSteingrube]

Modern update on the IR bit - most digital cameras have filters that remove IR. As such, your smartphone will have issues seeing IR LEDs. You'd have to find either an older camera, use one that is ALSO meant for night vision, or (attempt) to remove the filter.

[angus]

Watch this at 1.25x speed for it to sound normal conversation speed!

[codemiesterbeats]

lol "look for construction workers who appear not to be doing anything" the road workers just always seem to be milling around with one guy doing some work.

[Willam_J]

The reason your friend was able to talk over the store’s intercom wasn’t because he was close to its frequency. Store intercoms are typically wired. What happens is that the speaker wires act as antennas, feed the RF into the audio amplifiers, the RF gets detected/demodulated by the transistor junctions which converts it back to audio and then it gets amplified and is sent out to the speakers. Very common problem with people who live close to AM radio towers. The solution is to wind the speaker wires, near the amp, around a ferrite core to suppress the RF from getting into the amplifier.

[lynxlive]

with the dod budget they'd just buy the house next to you :P

[siprus]

Btw if the video you are uploding has web links in it's slides plz upload them in the description! saves lot's of people lot's of time trying to look up that link!

[diablominero]

There's a night vision camera near my house that I can see the infrared LEDs on. They're very dim to the eye, and they wouldn't be any use if the camera found them as dim as I do. I think they should switch to longer-wave infrared or lower-power lights if they don't want to be caught watching the sidewalk.

[martinkunev]

33:38 what about bulgaria? does he mean there are no regulations on these devices there?

[codemiesterbeats]

I use a thermal camera... never found any bugs but find lots of instances of me wasting electricity lol
I am an automotive mechanic and at my shop we discovered a tracking device on a lady's car... we debated on whether we should tell her about it... we decided we should tell her.
she was mad, and suspected her husband or boyfriend lol

[selenadansfield]

Although this guy isn't as funny as some presenters, this is a packed-full of information panel!

[harryassenbach]

I maintain if I ever found a bumper beeper on my vehicle I'd discretely remove it and then attach it to a rail car.  :)

[micky]

I enjoyed this. Good to have a break from the high tech stuff for a bit.

[landonpowell]

His initials are PP. Why did he pass up the opportunity to be Dr. P P?

[thetruthseekerseekingthetr]

I have noticed on my cell phone and on my tablet when i look at the available networks that i have this perticular WiFi network by the name luserland -2.4guest or it will change just to luserland, which seems to alway follow me where ever I go in my truck. I could go for miles and it will be right there on my available network. And then so often it would disappear and I could be at my house and I suddenly appears. But most days its there then other days its gone. My concern or my question for anyone who has knowledge about this kinda of stuff can explain to me why this network is always available on my cell where ever I mean where ever I go and the signal is always very close. This just started maybe about 6months ago. I thought at first it was a joke someone was playing on me with the name luserland, but now I'm getting a little concerned, because I do everything on my phone. Its funny because it started when I started to watch a lot of YouTube becuz I was always curious about what the conspericy theriost had to say. Not that I am one but just a curious person.
Please help me
Thank you and be serious in no jokes.

[Impedancenetwork]

This talk was way to simplistic.  Everything on the tailing subject was obvious.

[testingmailbox]

Looks like jacob's talk was removed, but this appears to have been the code for it (since he used a terrible font). it's shift inverse is LiL
vlLAIhwUglU

[troyhayder]

I'm definitely being spied on and it's bloody obvious.. Although why they bother spying on me is some kind of bizzare question nobody seems to want to answer...