12-2-2011 Global:
GATINEAU, Que. — Picture it: a junior executive, excited to be travelling to Hong Kong representing his company at the table with potential Chinese investors. Little does he know, they'll be the ones doing the courting — and the consequences, for his career, and his company, can cost millions.
It happens all the time, says Brian McAdam, a former Canadian diplomat who now specializes in Chinese organized crime. "It's the co-mingling of the oldest profession, and the second oldest profession: prostitution and espionage," he said.
McAdam, who spoke Wednesday at the Canadian Industrial Security Conference in Gatineau, said Canadian business people and government officials who frequently travel abroad are prime targets for "sexpionage" because, until now, Canadians have been "as babes in the woods," only recently becoming aware that foreign spies will pay good money to steal our ideas.
"Sexpionage is far more effective than any technological surveillance by satellite or anything else," said McAdam. "It's so easy and it doesn't cost much: They hire a prostitute, she does her work, and they have a film — instead of complex spying."
Those who favour the technique — in particular, China and Russia — use hidden cameras and microphones to up their spygame.
Nowadays, spies also mine social networks to "get to know their targets," making it easier to form a quick bond and gain their trust, said McAdam, who added that these networks have "an unending supply of susceptible men."
In September, Conservative MP Bob Dechert made headlines when fawning emails he sent to Shi Rong, a reporter with the Chinese state press agency, Xinhua, became public.
Some security experts say Xinhua functions as an intelligence-gathering arm of the Chinese government and warned that an MP with foreign affairs duties shouldn't have been in a private relationship with one of its reporters.
The Harper government said only that there was no indication Dechert did anything inappropriate.
"You never get the rest of the story," said McAdam. "How many people are going to say, 'Yes, I had a sexual affair and now I'm being blackmailed?' "
While it's unclear whether Dechert was a target, McAdam said a little awareness and some common sense could save many victims of sexpionage a lifetime of guilt and blackmail. "If you're not tall, dark and handsome, and some beautiful woman starts flirting with you, maybe there's something going on," he said.
Canada is a "treasure trove" for spies because this country's wealth is in its ideas, said McAdam. China's intelligence services systematically target Canada's science and technology sectors and use Chinese students and visiting scientists to steal technology for military use and to enhance that country's global economic competitiveness.
He estimated that Chinese spies cost Canada $1 billion every month through industrial espionage.
"I want to scare people a little bit. They have to be suspicious because every country in the world uses (sexpionage) as a spying technique," said McAdam, "Except Canada . . . we never do nasty things," he said with a smile.
Although most of the men he speaks to about sexpionage think they're immune to the womanly wiles of these professional seductresses, McAdam said the "honey traps" can be hard to detect.
One of the first times McAdam himself was targeted was as a Canadian diplomat in Copenhagen in 1972. Three Soviet diplomats were "trolling around, trying to establish a relationship with him."
They offered him trips to Moscow, trysts with beautiful women, "a whole grocery list of things. I tried to put them off, telling them I was married. It didn't work."
He told the RCMP officers with him in Denmark who advised that he play along to find out how far it would go. When he was finally invited to the Soviet Embassy for dinner, and got the same pitch from the ambassador, he turned the situation around, alerted the authorities, and had diplomats thrown out of Copenhagen.
In Hong Kong, when McAdam — who said he couldn't go into much detail — was having drinks with a few Chinese colleagues, "suddenly three beautiful Chinese women walk in," he said.
McAdam, who had already been the target of sexpionage many times, said he asked one of the women what she did for work. She said she was a 'mamasan' at the Volvo club — a notorious Hong Kong strip club.
Pretty soon, McAdam said the women sitting on either side of him started running their hands up his thigh as his host invited him to take the women — all three — back to a karaoke room which had privacy — and a bed.
"I couldn't believe it. I had trusted these guys," he said.
Instead of venturing to the backroom den, McAdam said he stood up, thanked his colleagues for "an interesting evening" and high-tailed it out of there.
"The sad thing is, when people are victims of this type of espionage, it's really terrible what can be done to them," he said. "It can ruin their lives, their relationship, their reputations: Everything."
"It's a disgusting activity and it's not going to go away." ..Source.. by Teresa Smith, Postmedia News
December 2, 2011
'Sexpionage' finds prime targets in Canadians, security conference told
November 2, 2011
Kid porn extortion plot jails man
Accused wanted 'salvation' for his victim
Gary Dufour may have threatened a man with a fake handgun and tried to extort $25,000 from him, but he did it for the "noble" cause of bringing "salvation" to the victim.
That was the picture Dufour's lawyer painted of the troubled man Tuesday as he was sentenced to one year and 45 days in jail for extortion and using an imitation firearm in the commission of an offence.
When Dufour found child porn on the victim's computer flash, he used the fake nine millimetre pistol and the extortion attempt to force the man to admit his wrongdoing, said lawyer Gary Mendler.
"Mr. Dufour, rather than taking this information to the police, sort of took it upon himself with the hopes of bringing salvation to the victim by getting him to confront his own demons," Mendler said Tuesday outside court.
"Although I would characterize this as a rather noble motive at the beginning, it's clear Mr. Dufour took a very, very strange route to get there."
Dufour, 41, was also charged with unlawful confinement and making a death threat, but the Crown withdrew those charges after he pleaded guilty to the other offences.
With credit for the time he spent in pre-trial custody, Dufour must serve another 41 days. He will also be on probation for three years.
Mendler said that after the extortion attempt, the victim went to police.
The victim was not charged with possessing child pornography, Mendler said.
Mendler said Dufour had been doing renovation work in a rental unit belonging to the victim when he came across a computer flash drive.
He had it for months before opening it and realizing it contained child pornography.
The discovery transported Dufour back to his own "terrible upbringing" that included sexual abuse in foster homes, which prompted him to try to make the man confess.
When Dufour was a young boy, said Mendler, his mother was killed in a car crash.
The wreck also left Dufour and his brother with serious injuries and put his sister in a lifelong coma.
After that, the family was split up and Dufour was passed around to 22 foster homes in Ontario and Alberta.
He was sexually abused at two of those homes.
Mendler said Dufour has only a Grade 8 education, the result of his constant shuffle from home to home.
Between the ages of 12 and 16, Dufour turned to booze and drugs to "block out his upbringing."
"It's almost apparent Mr. Dufour had no chance," said Mendler.
Assistant Crown attorney Tom Meehan, who agreed to a joint sentencing submission, said it's noteworthy given Dufour's upbringing that he doesn't already have a lengthy criminal record.
"It's amazing he has no criminal record," said Meehan.
"It's a credit to him that he hasn't got in trouble."
But Meehan added Dufour has shown "no clear remorse" and his "contempt for counselling is obvious."
Meehan also pointed out that Dufour did try to extort $25,000 from the victim in exchange for not going to police about the child porn.
It was a "profiteering version of vigilantism," he said. ..Source.. by Trevor Wilhelm, The Windsor Star
December 1, 2010
The FBI's Alert Regarding "Sextortion": Why Cyber Blackmail, Though Illegal, Is Difficult to Stop and What Computer Users Can Do
12-1-2010 National:
Extortion and blackmail have been around for centuries--but now, they've gone online. Once, a would-be blackmailer or extortionist would have to physically trail and spy on his or her victim, risking being spotted. Now, however, all that is necessary is a computer, and an online identity can hide the perpetrator's true identity.
Today, a blackmail or extortion plan may begin with a hacker's getting into an Internet user's pc and searching for embarrassing nude photos or messages. If a hacker takes control of a computer, he may be able to control the webcam and microphone. Thus, he can peer into the computer user's bedroom, hear his target's conversations, and know every keystroke she makes online. In addition to being a remote voyeur, the hacker may also become an extortionist -- threatening to reveal embarrassing secrets to a romantic partner or, in the case of a teenager, a parent, unless money is provided or additional intimate photos or videos are shared.
Or, such a scheme may begin with a seemingly innocuous online "friend" request, or a comment by a chat room buddy. Such a request or comment may lead to flirtation, which then results in the victim's transmitting compromising photos to the online "friend." Once those photos have been turned over, the "friend" has leverage to get more compromising photos, and/or to demand money to keep the photos secret.
Such schemes are common enough that they now have a name: Getting sensitive personal and sexual information from an Internet user and using it against that person is referred to as "sextortion."
In this column, I will describe the new phenomenon of sextortion; explain why such conduct is illegal under existing law; and discuss what steps Internet users -- including teens and their parents -- can take to avoid being the victim of a sextortion scheme.
The FBI's Recent Alert, Following on the Heels of a Major Sextortion Scheme
Just this past month, the FBI published an alert for Internet users, asking them to beware of the new threat posed by "sextortion" -- a term first used in a federal affidavit. The alert followed on the heels of a major arrest by the Los Angeles FBI this past summer. The arrestee was a 31-year-old California man, whose name has not been revealed. The man allegedly had engaged in the sextortion of more than 200 victims, many of who were teenage girls; and had invaded more than 100 computers.
The arrestee is alleged to have hacked into victims' computers; installed malicious code; downloaded sexually-compromising photos; and used those photos to extort more photos and videos from his victims.
The FBI said that the arrestee used a popular social-networking site and posed as a friend, relative, or other trusted contact in order to spread a computer virus that enabled him to access the victims' computers. In several instances, he posed online as a person's friend or sister, and sent the victim messages with attachments asking if she wanted to watch a scary video. If victims opened the attachment, the virus self-installed surreptitiously. Unbeknownst to the victim, the hacker then had control over her computer -- including all files, folders, images and devices.
The FBI alleges that, by threatening to share private and risqué information with their parents and email contacts, the man pressured the young women into providing him with additional pictures and videos. According to an FBI news report, in one example, the hacker attached a pornographic picture of his victim to an e-mail, and told her that unless she sent him a sexually-explicit video of herself, he would notify her parents about all the photos he had found on her computer.
The arrestee is alleged to have used a variety of screen names and e-mail addresses, including some suggestive ones such as Playgrl37 and Hotchit13w, in carrying out his scheme. ..For the remainder of this paper.. by ANITA RAMASASTRY
