This is SCARE-EEY!!!!

originally posted by: Farlander
Is there any reason you can think of someone would have wanted to listen to you, OP?

Is that really relevant?

The fact somebody wants to listen is reason enough to deny them that capability

Us "open minded" folks (on sites like ATS) probably attract all sorts of the "wrong" kind of attention. Free thinking and critical analysis is a threat to political prostitutes and state domination/monopolies alike

Of course all the counter measures in the World will only do so good. You should make it a point to litter your speech/writing with disinformation or unverifiable rabbit holes that will waste significant chunks of their time and money. The best way to drown a surveillance operator is to waste their time and money, and make sure they don't get anything for all their efforts. Not only will they pull the plug, but the operator himself is likely to lose their job for incompetence

If it is a private individual/group conducting the operation, it is probably to extort money or curry favor in some way or another

...and if it is a government, the best thing you can do is to start "talking on the phone" (even if no one is on the other end) to all your "friends" in non-cooperating foreign nations about secret plots and in coded language. The phone part will drive them nuts because they'll suspect you have a device which they have no insight on.

Okay, now this is really weird. As I've been sitting here I've been listening to these recordings in the background. Most of them are pretty innocuous, but one of them is of a conversation I remember quite well. I was talking to one of my colleagues about the Otto Warmbier / North Korea incident and how I thought there was more to it than meets the eye (and I really do feel this way). It is one of the few times I have ever articulated, from beginning to end, what I believe happened to him and why. Wow...that sent some chills down my spine!

It's probably nothing, or just a crazy coincidence, but holy mackerel!

a reply to: Farlander

I can think of a "few" reasons. Just from a business competition standpoint alone (in case you were thinking of something else).

originally posted by: JBurns


...and if it is a government, the best thing you can do is to start "talking on the phone" (even if no one is on the other end) to all your "friends" in non-cooperating foreign nations about secret plots and in coded language. The phone part will drive them nuts because they'll suspect you have a device which they have no insight on.

Heh...I like that one!! Especially that last part!

Another question for you I have is this.

Have you ever let a friend, family member or neighbor plug in a thumb drive into this laptop? They could have used a bootloader and installed spyware intentionally to keep tabs on you and your family. Also you mentioned initially you had keyboard issues? Maybe you also have a keylogger on this laptop as well.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

This reminds me of their "FALLCHILL" family of malware, although it is well known and I am sure they continually develop new tools. Heck, I had a Huwaii phone that communicated with an IP address in Bejing about 2-dozen times an hour (not very stealthy either)

FCD, I would not be surprised if it were NK or other foreign intelligence service.. especially given the field you work in, I could see them trying to leverage and exploit technical information for their own benefits

Like you said this could be something other than a state actor, but it most certainly is something (in my non professional opinion)

I seem to recall several security researchers using sand boxes and other techniques to pin these things up and you might find some help from a local university or perhaps even somebody in the field you work in. The case in mind was a person who believed malware was using beeps or fan speed sounds to communicate over an air gap system

originally posted by: Farlander
Is there any reason you can think of someone would have wanted to listen to you, OP?

He posted on ATS. That's all it takes.

Here is yet another good tool to have, and it's free.
ADWcleaner

When these recordings were made, You said you were talking to a friend, Was it the same friend, was it face to face or during a phone call?
Also, can you remember shutting your laptop down to have the discussion? Would that be something you would normally do.

a reply to: Soloprotocol

All good questions.

1. No, they are conversations with different people. Sometimes they are the same person, but mainly because I talk with that person more. Both face to face and on the phone. Not really any pattern that I can see.

2. No, normally I would not shut off my computer for something like this. More than likely I would just close it and put it to sleep for the conversation (just to save battery). However, at least one of the conversations I could swear I was in my car. My laptop definitely wouldn't have been on then, if it was even with me at all.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Well that is a horse of a completely different color if you think some of the recorded conversations didnt even take place in front of that computer!! Perhaps you have been infected with some really primo malware that has infected all of your devices, and used your main PC as sort of a command and control center? IDK man, thats a new one to me....

Throw away your Shoes, your pens, your watches. your trousers, Everything. They are onto you.

a reply to: PokeyJoe

It was a while ago, and I just seem to remember I was in my car. And it sounds like it too.

Oh, and a number of these conversations happened when I was not right at my computer. I would say roughly 30% of the ones I've listened to so far I'm not sitting right there. On one of the conversations I can tell I'm explaining something to some one on a whiteboard or something just by the nature of the conversation. I'm definitely drawing or writing on something away from the computer. I say whiteboard because I often illustrate things on a whiteboard if one is available (picture is worth a thousand words thing).

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Thats very weird, man. I wish I had an answer for you....I hope you get to the bottom of it, this whole thing has got me very perplexed.

a reply to: Soloprotocol

To me it's just more weird than anything. It just smacks of 'big brother' and the like. I doubt anything I have to say is earth shattering, but just the simple fact that tools like this exist at all is worthy of note. That they can be so carefully hidden and do these things is an enigma. Makes me wonder how many other people have similar things going on and don't realize it. In fact, this was my whole reason for posting the OP in the first place. If it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone.

...and people laugh sometimes when they see tape over my laptop camera! Then, as soon as they get done chuckling, they go put tape over theirs! LOL!

ETA - And if I was the really paranoid type I'd probably say someone deemed it important to eavesdrop on my conversations when they discovered they couldn't spy on me with my camera because it had tape over it! LOL!

CAn I just ask if you bought any usb devices around that time? My husband bought some and didn't use it but checked it out and it was full of malware.
Could be that it entered that way.

if you were married or have a live in girlfriend that was the jealous type id almost think she setup something to randomly record your conversations somehow.

If you have the date/time of these recordings...you should check timestamps of your ATS postings for the periods in question...to see how close in time they are to any particular topics you've commented on.

Possible that a controversial post here, initiated a little listening session from Big Brother.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Not saying you are not speaking the truth but you didnt notice several Gb of disk usage?
Why would an agency store data on a disk instead of downloading it without a trace? It looks amateurish. Maybe you should call police to get it analysed by professionals. It may be Chinese or NK industrial espionage. Or just private industrial espionage.

Who's doing the listening. Do you have a suspect in mind.?