Eavesdropping/Surveillance Devices

Voice and motion-activated bugs cost as little as $20 on eBay. These devices are getting smaller and smaller, with more and more sophisticated listening and recording capabilities. They can exfiltrate voice and video across multiple radio bands, using FM, cellular and/or Wi-Fi. To learn more about uncovering Eavesdropping and Surveillance devices operating in your environment read our Bastille data sheets or request a Bastille demo.

Key Takeaways

• Audio surveillance bugs can be bought for as little as 20 dollars and hidden covertly in a room
• An analog FM bug transmits room audio on a radio frequency an attacker simply tunes in to receive
• A cellular bug with a SIM calls the attacker when it hears activity, blending in with normal cellular data traffic
• The cellular variety is harder to spot in the spectrum, and some bugs add a camera that sends photos over cellular

Video Transcript

[MUSIC PLAYING] Hello, my name is Balint Seeber and I'm the director of vulnerability research at Bastille. I'd like to talk to you about surveillance devices that can be used to intercept sensitive conversations, for example, in a boardroom within the enterprise environment. These include audio bugs and other surveillance devices that can be placed covertly, say, under a table, and be left there to transmit, via analog or digital means, this information out to an attacker. And all these devices are very, very cheap.

So you can actually purchase some of these devices for less than $20. One example is an analog FM bug. And this is a simple device. All these bugs are quite small. So this is an example of size. You would just place this under a table. It would operate over a battery for quite some time. And it would transmit analog FM over the radio spectrum at any number of different frequencies. And an attacker would then have a radio and just simply be able to listen and hear what was happening at the remote end.

The other possible bug is a bug that uses the cellular network. So this is a bug where you would actually place a SIM chip inside the device. And then from the other end, you can actually call the device, program it, and then the device will call you on a phone when there is actually activity in the room. So when it picks up, for example, voices in the room, you will receive a phone call and then you can listen to it. In that instance, it's actually using the normal cell network.

So it wouldn't be as easily obvious as an FM bug you just popping up somewhere in the spectrum. It would look potentially like your normal data traffic on a cellular service. And that means that it's a little bit harder to simply detect by looking at the spectrum. So that means that it's a little bit more covert. There are other devices that also may include a camera that can actually take photos and send them again through the cellular data service. Thanks very much for listening. If you'd like to learn more, please visit our website.

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