Schneier on Security

Clive Robinson • January 2, 2026 1:56 PM

@ KC, ALL,

With regards,

“There are so many fascinating aspects to this.”

Yes, and one thought that occured is that I suspect putting malware on the cameras is not that difficult…

Which in turn brings up a thought about the cameras actually being as source of OsInt on what the local authorities are taking an interest in…

Back a long long time ago, the people that first used “bugging devices” like the “infinity bug” was not State or Federal law enforcement or even the CIA but what was called back then The Mafia, who bugged the FBI[1].

Thus those in the know could keep an eye not just all around where they are but also see when others were connecting and what IP address etc and work out who was taking interest in them. So in effect not just OSInt but a way of implementing “counter surveillance at next to no cost and near invisibility to those running surveillance. Something that might say be of use currently to some in Minnesota and the “Somali Fraud” issues,

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/12/31/politics/trump-walz-minnesota-child-care-fraud

Where coincidentally premises under investigation had “strange but timely” burglaries happen. Where the only things stolen were administrative and financial records. These occured just before state and federal investigators could seize the records. Oh and also the burglars apparently also made very odd holes in walls[3].

[1] They got into the phones of the FBI and turned them into “room surveillance” they could just dial into and use. The bug contained a “tone relay” that when activated “latched closed” and held the phone line open. All you needed was a harmonica to activate the bug. It was actually a nice little design for the time. What is not so clear is that a similar design was later used by the Russians for the “Great Grain Robbery”[2] as it became known.

[2] Due to unfavourable weather and very poor political management the Soviet winter grain production was a total disaster and starvation was likely to happen. Something that had happened before a number of times and had lead to entire regions starving with murder and cannibalism as a result.

In 1972 the Soviets cooked up a plan to manipulate down the price of US wheat and buy as much as they could. The US had an excess of grain in Government storage so Kisenger agreed to a trade deal to negotiate the selling of the excess.

The “trade deal was held at “The Madison hotel” Washington, D.C., with two official Soviet teams and a number of Soviet surveillance experts. On the American side were multiple representatives of American grain businesses and officials representing the U.S. government. The US business representatives stayed at the Hotel and some of their rooms were apparently bugged by the Soviets.

The Russians negotiated a very favourable deal and got it on credit from the US government. The result was they caused a world wide grain shortage and the price of many domestic commodities went up between 25% and 100% due to the shortages created. Apparently the Soviets then sold some of the grain at considerable profit.

It might not have happened if Congress had not played around with NASA funding… The same month NASA put up the first Landsat 1 satellite that had been delayed. As a non military satellite it was down the priority list. Landsat 1 was the first of it’s type, and gave the first-ever global view of drought and crop conditions from space.

The fall out from the “Great Grain Robbery” as some one in Congress supposedly named it, changed their view of things (which held untill fairly recently). The “scandal” that arose prompted NASA to form task forces with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and NOAA to develop further such satellites and reporting systems on global crop health.

The US had it’s own poor weather crop failure back in 2021 for similar weather change reasons. NASA still has a page up currently on the event that tells a little about the “Great Grain Robbery”,

https://www.nasa.gov/earth/how-satellite-maps-help-prevent-another-great-grain-robbery/

[3] As some will already know –it’s been discussed here in the past– “cavity walls” are used to hide things conveniently out of sight. In the past spies and similar have used them as dumps for equipment and high value banknotes cash, identity documents and gold coins. To further disguise things and make them water and rodent proof they would be vacuum wrapped in “damp course plastic” then cast into fake concrete blocks that look like large internal construction masonry bricks and weigh about the same (the vacuum packing is known to work to stop “sniffer dogs”). The bricks are then only very lightly mortared in place to look like “shoddy builders” work, but leave them easy to remove with minimal noise and vibration. Put in “external walls” they can be quickly accessed from either inside or outside of the premises due to the way many US buildings are “made to code”.