Friday, December 12, 2008

Is my cell phone bugged? Six steps to resolving the problem.

Is my cell phone bugged? Six steps to resolving the problem.
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There has been a significant increase in visitors to Mobile Telephone Evidence seeking help as to how to detect and confirm whether their cell phones are bugged or not? My observations (note the word 'observations' and NOT 'advice') would be to not fool around in this area trying to outwit those who you think are outwitting you.
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Remember any action you take is your choice and responsibility, the steps below are only observations.
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1) Back-up the data that are on handset and SIM card - keep the data safe as you may want it for your new mobile phone.
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1) Clear the 'handset' of any personal data by using factory restore. Remember, that is handset data and not SIM data.
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2) Go to a reputable recycling company and give the handset to them. Remember not to leave your SIM card in the handset.
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3) Get yourself a bog-standard £10.00/$10.00 (something cheap) mobile phone with a manufacturer's proprietory operating system. This phone should be used for business so that you know your competitors are not obtaining the content of your business communications. Do not lend your new phone to anyone and do not leave it unattended for long periods of time.
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4) If you really cannot do without a symbian or windows mobile phone then make sure the content of your communications do not contain company secrets etc. Do not lend your new phone to anyone and do not leave it unattended for long periods of time.
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5) Finally, if you are still not happy, you don't like 1) and 2), above, and you still think your phone is bugged, then remove the outer casing of the handset and cut up all the chips on the handset's printed circuit board and then burn everything on the fire. Remember not to leave your SIM card in the handset when cutting up or burning it.
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6) Repeat step 3) above.

Research into hands-free mobile calls whilst driving

Research into hands-free mobile calls whilst driving
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I read the research of Dr Melina Kunar from the the University of Warwickshire and Todd Horowitz of the Harvard Medical School into "Hands free mobile phone conversations add 5 metres to drivers' braking distances":
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As the lead researcher in the project, Melina's research unearthed new findings relating to hands-free mobile calls and driving:
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Photo: Melina Kunar's research into
hands-free mobile calls and driving
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"The researchers found that on average the reaction times of those engaging in the hands free telephone conversation were 212 milliseconds slower than those who undertook the task without the simultaneous telephone conversation. A car travelling at 60 miles an hour would travel 5.7 metres (18.7 feet) in that time so the distracting conversation would obviously increase any braking distance at that speed by the same amount. The test participants who were distracted by a phone conversation also made 83% more errors in the task than those not in phone conversations.
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"The researchers also looked at the effect the hands free telephone conversations had on visual attention if the phone conversation was skewed to a more passively orientated task. To do so they asked the test participants to listen over the speaker phones to a series of words and to repeat each word in turn. The research team also looked at the effect of a much more complicated conversational task in which the test participants had to listen to a series of words and after each word then think of and say a new word which began with the last letter of the word they had just heard.
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"Our research shows that simply using phones hands free is not enough to eliminate significant impacts on a driver’s visual attention. Generating responses for a conversation competes for the brain’s resources with other activities which simply cannot run in parallel. This leads to a cognitive "bottleneck" developing in the brain, particularly with the more complicated task of word generation."
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It is the finding of "bottleneck" (causation) that struck me as significant, for would that still be the case of causation where a car passenger engages in conversation with the driver of a car? An article in the Economist titled 'Driving and mobile phones. Just shut up, will you'. Dec 4th 2008 appears to answer this question:
At the University of Utah research into "chatting to passengers have the same detrimental effect on driving? An earlier study found that it does not. That research, led by Frank Drews of the University of Utah, analysed the performance of young drivers using a vehicle simulator. Dr Drews found that when using a hands-free phone, a volunteer “drove” significantly worse than he did when just talking to someone playing the role of a passenger. Passengers, the researchers believed, might even help road safety by commenting on surrounding traffic."

Friday, December 05, 2008

Sound Waves Could Power Cell Phone?

Sound Waves Could Power Cell Phone?
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Cell phones are only useful so long as they have charge left in the battery, may not be an obvious comment to make when looking at the future as to how cell phones may be powered. Pioneering work, by Professor Tahir Cagin at the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering at Texas A&M University, in the area of 'sounds waves' to help cell phones generate self-power could revolutionise, and have profound impact on, 'power harvesting' in the future, and not just for cell phones either, but other lower powered devices, such as radios, laptops, pagers, PMR etc.
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The way it works, sound waves produced by the user of a cell phone can generate the energy the cell phone needs to operate. The science behind this is generated from materials know as "piezoelectrics". Professor Cagin's research focused on nanotechnology and made the significant discovery in the area of 'power harvesting', "found that a certain type of piezoelectric material can convert energy at a 100 percent increase when manufactured at a very small size – in this case, around 21 nanometers in thickness." To comprehend the minute level at which this work is carried out, nanometers are a microscopic unit of measurement representing one-billionth of a meter. Atoms and molecules are measured in nanometers, and a human hair is about 100,000 nanometers wide.

Polarizable Charge Equilibration Interaction
Potentials are essential in describing piezo-
and ferro-electricity in ABO3 ceramics for sensors,
actuators and energy harvesting applications.
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Chambers Science and Technology Dictionary identifies the term 'piezo' is derived from the Greek word 'piezein', a verb meaning 'to press'. In 1880, French scientists P.& J. Curie discovered "Those crystals having one or more axes whose ends are unlike, that is to say hemihedral crystals with oblique faces, have the special physical property of giving rise to two electrical poles of opposite signs at the extremities of these axes when they are subjected to a change in temperature: this is the phenomenon known under the name of pyroelectricity." They went on to state, "We have found a new method for the development of polar electricity in these same crystals, consisting in subjecting them to variations in pressure along their hemihedral axes." [Curie, P. and J. Curie, Development by pressure of polar electricity in hemihedral crystals with inclined faces. Bull. soc. min. de France, 1880. 3: p. 90-93.].
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From the research I conducted into 'piezoelectrics' it suggests that it is not a new science, per se. Thus, has this science been used for any other technologies that took advantage of the ability of certain crystalline or ceramic materials to develop an electric charge proportionally generated from some form of stress presented to them? Examples that I was able to find on the Internet: the spark that ignites the fuel in a lighter occurs due to pressure of the lighter button impacting on a piezoelectric crystal; night clubs that use piezoelectrics built into the floors that absorb the energy of dancers foot-movements to provide energy to power the lights; the same principle applied to using gymnasium equipment to provide energy is yet another example. Indeed, walking can help produce the same energy to generate back up power supplies. Professor Cagin's further discovery of researching the basic laws of physics that relates to human speech (pressure) and from that to 'power harvest' from speech waves to generate energy can only add to the incredible scientific phenomenon that piezoelectrics has become.
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Extrapolating what might be possible should such a science be implemented into mobile telephones, certainly users would like it as they may never again need to obtain another battery when the life-span of a battery has been reached, no recharging at the electric socket, or have a flat battery preventing mobile calls until the battery is recharged back at home or the office. I should imagine mobile network operators would love this technology, too, as it implies more people will have an excuse to spend even more time yakking on the mobile, thus call traffic revenues could increase. From a climate greenhouse emissions standpoint it should be an exciting draw, particularly for Government, because piezoelectrics allows for renewable energies with minimal carbon-footprint, apparently.
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Some downsides: how will battery manufacturers see their future?; train and bus passenger complaints will probably increase about other passengers using their mobile phones in carriages etc, not convinced by the mobile phone user-offenders claiming they are only recharging their phones; for mobile phone examiners, though, this could be problematical for mobile phones exhibits with no-charge in them to operate and conduct data acquisition. How to energise the phone will be one question needing to be answered? Evidentially, having to admit the mobile phone examiner had been chatting on the phone to power it raises all sorts of issues, and what about when the examiner has 20 phones to be turned around quickly?
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Source of scientific development and photo: Texas A&M University

Tuesday, December 02, 2008

Nokia 6233 Clock

Nokia 6233 Clock
I have mentioned Vinny Parmar's name on this webblog previously. Vinny has just sent to me an email setting out a quirk that he has noted with the Nokia 6233 Clock.
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Vinny Parmar, Lead Forensic Examiner:
"Basically I was working on a Nokia 6233. I used XRY and Oxygen Phone Manager (OPM) to read the data. No issues with the content as far as the text was concerned. XRY, as always, advanced the time of each SMS by 1 hour and Oxygen did not, howvever Oxygen did not pull off the SMSC associated with each SMS.
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"Now your asking so what was the issue, well let me tell you. After the read I proceeded with a manual verification of the date\times for each SMS. What I noticed was that although Oxygen pulled of the dates\times there was a slight issue in what was displayed, for example: An SMS received - OPM listed the date\time as 15/05/08 15:51:49, the handset displayed this as 15/05/08 03:51:49.
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"As far as the verification goes, one would assume that the correct time was as reported by the handset which was 03:51:49 which would suggest AM due to the format. However what I noticed was that when I checked the date\time format setting on the handset this turned out to be set to the 12 hour clock, but the handset did not display what I was expecting, which was the AM or PM prefix?
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"So after a little adjustment with the handset, changed the format to 24hr clock all the SMS date\time were now displayed exactly as displayed by OPM. My suspicions were also confirmed by the content of messages and the suspects involved, they are school kids, so I couldn't really see SMS transmissions being sent/received at 3am. So, in essence, the above would suggest that as examiners we may need to consider adjusting the date\time format setting on a handset to confirm the correct format. Most of the handsets which are set to the 12-hour clock tend to display the appropriate prefix of AM or PM but for some unknown reason this was not the case with the Nokia 6233. This certainly requires further research."

Another ultra-thin membrane device

Another ultra-thin membrane device

John Lorne, Technical Officer for South Manchester GMP, having read the discussion in the thread "Ultra-thin membrane changes (U)SIM card usage"**, wants to raise awareness that, during his examinations, John has had firsthand experience with another similar device and emailed some comments to the webblog, along with the images below, which he thought would be of interest to readers
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John Lorne, Technical Officer:
"I have used one of these its named MT-SIM. They are for using one's phone on any network. It works by punching a small hole into your SIM and laying the contacts of the MT SIM onto the contacts of your SIM.
"The small hole is required as the chip on the MT SIM faces the opposite way (upwards and away from the SIM compartment) and is the same thickness.The MT SIM is not a solution for multi unlocking as it has to sit with its surrogate all the time (the MT SIM works by making the handset omit from asking the question on start up "what network are we on?") as soon as the MT SIM is seperate then the handset will revert to its network provider.
"I have tried this on a test phone for examination purposes and found it works and allows one to get into the handset. I lost my call history with this operation but I would've lost this in any case when I use my test SIMs (I use Motorola test SIM to bypass network issues, but in every case I lose call history, Focus 112 can recover this for me). In the end a colleague of mine asked could I unlock his daughter's phone to any network, it was a BB5 phone and at the time couldn't be unlocked in the more traditional way ie UFS/JAF box. I slid this in and it worked exactly as it said it would, so in some cases its actually quite advanced."

Another ultra-thin membrane device

Another ultra-thin membrane device

John Lorne, Technical Officer for South Manchester GMP, having read the discussion in the thread "Ultra-thin membrane changes (U)SIM card usage"**, wants to raise awareness that, during his examinations, John has had firsthand experience with another similar device and emailed some comments to the webblog, along with the images below, which he thought would be of interest to readers
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John Lorne, Technical Officer:
"I have used one of these its named MT-SIM. They are for using one's phone on any network. It works by punching a small hole into your SIM and laying the contacts of the MT SIM onto the contacts of your SIM.
"The small hole is required as the chip on the MT SIM faces the opposite way (upwards and away from the SIM compartment) and is the same thickness.The MT SIM is not a solution for multi unlocking as it has to sit with its surrogate all the time (the MT SIM works by making the handset omit from asking the question on start up "what network are we on?") as soon as the MT SIM is seperate then the handset will revert to its network provider.
"I have tried this on a test phone for examination purposes and found it works and allows one to get into the handset. I lost my call history with this operation but I would've lost this in any case when I use my test SIMs (I use Motorola test SIM to bypass network issues, but in every case I lose call history, Focus 112 can recover this for me). In the end a colleague of mine asked could I unlock his daughter's phone to any network, it was a BB5 phone and at the time couldn't be unlocked in the more traditional way ie UFS/JAF box. I slid this in and it worked exactly as it said it would, so in some cases its actually quite advanced."