Noise box for 007

 

Image from author

What do Desmond Llewelyn, John Cleese and Ben Whishaw have in common? Well, they all played the role of Q in James Bond films. You know, that grumpy man who provides Bond with all kinds of technical gadgets, such as shoes with a poisonous blade incorporated into them, a lipstick bomb and a watch with a powerful built-in laser. Not that I'm a big 007 fan or a Q-groupy, but I recently came across something special that wouldn't look out of place in the arsenal of a double-zero agent.

It looks like a sushi box, someone said. But a heavy one, because the case weighs 600 grams (1,3 lb), partly due to the thick bottom and ditto lid. The lid closes hermetically and the round thing on the front says automatic pressure purge. Inside you will see a small switch, plus and minus buttons and a few LEDs. No, this is not a sushi box. This is really something from Q's lab.

If you turn on the device - because that is what it is - and close the lid, you will hear noise. The volume buttons give you six different settings; no matter what setting you select, you can hear the white noise through the closed box, and in the loudest setting it is downright annoying. As soon as you open the lid, the noise stops.

Have you figured it out yet? I'll just tell. This thing is meant to store your phone during confidential meetings. The noise ensures that any eavesdroppers who have hacked your phone to secretly eavesdrop on you will only hear noise. And through the transparent lid you can see when something arrives on your phone, for example a message or a call. That is the advantage of this box over a Faraday cage, which blocks all electromagnetic radiation and actually creates an airplane mode environment - although it cannot be ruled out that malware makes a recording and sends it later. In short, with this box you are accessible and uneavesdropable at the same time. Wow.

I can totally see it. James Bond in M's office, who is about to reveal the next assignment. But first the phones go into a box like the one you see. Because that meeting is, of course, top secret. And officials like those two are by definition a target to the kind of hackers who have the knowledge and resources to plant eavesdropping software (I'm thinking of our beloved state actors). And of course our film heroes must be reachable at all times, because their American colleague Felix Leiter may call with important news.

In real life, the market for this product will also be the world of spies. In addition, top industrialists and other people who know something that others would also love to know will also be among the customers of the Dutch company that developed this thing. You are less likely to encounter it in an online store with nice gift ideas for Christmas, if only because it seems to be quite pricey.

In less exciting ecosystems, they use a poor-man's version of this high-tech device: a preserving jar. You know, one of those glass jars with a rubber ring and a snap closure, intended for preserving fruit and vegetables. Well, you can also put your phone in such a hermetically sealed jar, while it still remains visible (but first remove the food and clean it thoroughly, please). Due to the lack of a preserving jar, I cannot test whether this contraption is soundproof, but I do want to believe that its use is not pointless. If only that awareness about confidentiality gets a boost when there are suddenly preserving jars on the conference table.

Happy holidays from Borsoi, Patrick Borsoi.

The Security (b)log will return next year.

 
And in the big bad world...

This section contains a selection of news articles I came across in the past week. Because the original version of this blog post is aimed at readers in the Netherlands, it contains some links to articles in Dutch. Where no language is indicated, the article is in English.

• a marketing company claims that it can listen to conversations via your phone or smart speaker in order to send you targeted advertising.
• The EU now has AI regulations, but not much is happening yet.
• This Polish train will no longer run as soon as a third party tinkers with it.
• those leaking password managers from last week aren’t that bad after all.
• British soldiers sometimes have difficulty with the difference between 'to' and 'bcc'.
• the cyber war in Ukraine rages on as well.
• Libyan officials are taught how to deal with cyber threats in future elections.
• the Dutch government warns us about messages from fake delivery services. [DUTCH]
• the British government fears a catastrophic ransomware attack.
• Adobe is being taken to court for placing tracking cookies. [DUTCH]
• chatbots such as ChatGPT are 'in principle' taboo for government officials. [DUTCH]