Business class, compromised
In early 2025, a European executive arrived in Bangkok for what seemed like a standard regional trip: back-to-back meetings, a dinner with partners and a panel at a well-known hotel. Forty-eight hours later, his phone began behaving strangely. Unknown logins appeared on his WhatsApp account, a cloned version of a sensitive slide deck surfaced in Telegram groups and a local competitor mysteriously cancelled a joint venture they hadn’t yet announced publicly. The executive hadn’t lost his phone, hadn’t clicked on any phishing links or at least not knowingly. Everything had happened quietly in the blur background.
Such incidents are no longer rare. In Southeast Asia’s fastest-moving business cities, the digital and physical risks facing travelling executives have evolved. These are not warzones or obvious danger zones. They are dynamic commercial capitals, deeply integrated into global supply chains and financial systems. But precisely because of this openness and activity, they have become ideal operating environments for surveillance, interception, and information extraction.
Why executive travel is more exposed in 2025
Corporate travel has returned at full pace, but its landscape has changed. Surveillance tools once limited to intelligence agencies have become cheaper, smaller, and widely available through grey-market channels. From hotel AV systems to airport charging stations, from cloned QR codes to compromised meeting apps, entry points are everywhere.
Southeast Asia’s digital infrastructure while impressively developed, remains unevenly regulated. In Malaysia and the Philippines, for instance, hotel chains and co-working spaces have been quietly exploited by groups with access to network-layer surveillance tools, often routed through outdated telecom gateways (Positive Technologies, 2024). In Thailand, private investigators frequently operate in the shadow space between corporate intelligence and state surveillance, using commercial spyware and spoofed SMS tools to profile or follow targets (Citizen Lab, 2023).
Hong Kong, though legally distinct, has also seen a rise in tailormade social engineering cases. These often start with a convincing LinkedIn message and escalate to in-person meetings where data is subtly extracted, not stolen. In some cases, the conversations themselves are the operation.
Tactics in use: subtle, scalable, often invisible
The most effective attacks today are not brute-force hacks but quiet, opportunistic exploits that leverage human error, technical blind spots, or both.
In Indonesia, a 2024 investigation by a regional cybersecurity lab found rogue charging stations embedded with data-extraction firmware in at least two major airports. Executives charging their phones before transit were unknowingly transferring metadata, contacts, recent files, partial message logs, to offshore servers (ASEAN Cyber Resilience Forum, 2024).
In the Philippines, an energy sector executive was targeted by a group posing as a local consulting firm. Over two in-person meetings in Makati, the visitors obtained an early draft of an LNG contract via an innocuous-sounding Bluetooth file share which the executive thought had come from his own assistant’s phone. It hadn’t.
In Malaysia, AV systems in luxury hotel conference rooms were found to be remotely accessible via a known vulnerability in Android-based control panels. A Singaporean bank’s regional HR head, after a day of sensitive personnel discussions, was later told by a contact that word of upcoming layoffs had already reached union groups despite the fact that no emails had been sent.
The method is rarely obvious. The tools are simple. The effect is lasting.
Behind the façade: how these systems work
To understand how these risks emerge, it’s worth looking not at isolated actors but at the infrastructure that connects them. In Thailand, mobile carriers still allow inbound SS7 signaling messages from less secure international gateways, a vulnerability that allows location tracking and SMS interception (GSMA Mobile Security Guidelines, 2023). In practice, this means that if an executive’s number is known, their location can often be narrowed to the district or building they are in. Read our article about SS7 [linked to article]
In Hong Kong and Manila, popular messaging apps like WeChat and WhatsApp are vulnerable to social cloning, where a malicious actor creates a nearly identical profile and begins communicating with the target’s contacts. This can be paired with spoofed local numbers to increase credibility, particularly when traveling staff are fatigued or distracted.
Even in high-end hotels, IoT-based surveillance is quietly growing. Smart TVs, room tablets, and even automated blinds are connected to backend systems that, in many cases, have not been patched or secured since installation. These are not high-priority systems for hotel IT staff, but they often share the same Wi-Fi environment as guest networks.
Corporate espionage in context
One anonymized case involves a merger negotiation between two logistics firms, one European, one Malaysian, held over several meetings in a downtown Kuala Lumpur hotel. Days before the signing, the Malaysian side backed out. Weeks later, a third party launched a similar regional expansion that was armed with remarkably similar contract terms.
Internal investigation revealed that during the stay, the visiting team had used the hotel’s printer to review and annotate documents. That printer, connected to the hotel’s unsecured admin network, had a memory buffer storing scans of every page printed that week. No firewall. No password. No trace.
This is not rare and it is not always criminal. But it does reflect the reality that infrastructure we don’t control often ends up being part of the security perimeter.
Preparing smarter, not harder
Preventing these risks is not about fear. It’s about clarity.
Before travel, executives should prepare dedicated phones and laptops configured for specific jurisdictions. File access should be limited, with sensitive data stored in cloud environments accessible only via multi-factor authentication. Screening accommodations, meeting venues, and even scheduled hosts via light OSINT (open-source intelligence) methods can provide valuable context. If a local partner has a history of digital security lapses, it matters.
During the trip, limiting Bluetooth, disabling unnecessary location sharing, and avoiding public file transfers are small habits with large impact. Private VPNs (not just any VPN app) should be used, and encrypted messaging platforms like Signal or Wire remain more secure than email for quick exchanges.
After the trip, a structured post-travel review of devices scanning, review of shared files, and a quiet debrief can detect subtle anomalies before they become liabilities. Often, the real impact of a compromise only appears months later, when strategies are leaked or decisions are preempted.
Conclusion: executive mobility in an uneven playing field
Southeast Asia remains one of the world’s most promising regions for cross-border investment, innovation, and strategic partnerships. But with this opportunity comes exposure. The region’s hospitality, dynamism, and open architecture make it both welcoming and, in certain corners, opportunistic.
For executives, travel security is no longer just about avoiding risk. It is about understanding how risk manifests (quietly, technically, sometimes even socially) and designing mobility practices that are as adaptive as the markets they serve.
Professionals who understand these realities will not only protect themselves, they will make better decisions, communicate more strategically, and lead with an awareness that gives them true regional fluency.
[c’est cool, mais tu peux retirer les sources]
Sources and References
- Positive Technologies: SS7 Network Risks in APAC (2024) – www.ptsecurity.com
- Kaspersky Asia: Threat Landscape Southeast Asia (2025) – www.kaspersky.com
- Citizen Lab: Regional Surveillance Toolkits and Telecom Vulnerabilities (2023) – www.citizenlab.ca
- ASEAN Cyber Resilience Forum (2024 Briefings) – aseancyber.org
- GSMA Mobile Security Guidelines (2023 Edition) – www.gsma.com