Malware scam appears to use GPS data to catch speeding Pennsylvania drivers
1–10 of 28 posts
Re: Malware scam appears to use GPS data to catch speeding Pennsylvania drivers
#2Just drivers in one locality? Sounds more like the police network has been compromised than GPS capable malware.
Re: Malware scam appears to use GPS data to catch speeding Pennsylvania drivers
#3Here's a slightly earlier article about this: http://www.phillymag.com/news/2016/03/25/speeding-ticket-sca...
Nothing in either story explains why the victims would be geographically clustered in Pennsylvania. But if the scam was prevalent elsewhere, I'd think we'd be hearing more people saying "I got one too!".
I wonder if there's some other angle than a shared smartphone app explains the locality better: a disgruntled neighbor with a radar gun, or something. The obvious problem with any local theory, though, is that it would have to explain discovery of the email addresses.
Re: Malware scam appears to use GPS data to catch speeding Pennsylvania drivers
#4Here's a slightly earlier article about this: http://www.phillymag.com/news/2016/03/25/speeding-ticket-sca... Nothing in either story explains why the victims would be geographically clustered in Pennsylvania. But if the scam was prevalent elsewhere, I'd think we'd be hearing more people saying "I got one too!". I wonder if there's some other angle than a shared smartphone app explains the locality better: a disgrunt…
I like how that article refers to the cops as "very sporting" for not enforcing these fake tickets.
Re: Malware scam appears to use GPS data to catch speeding Pennsylvania drivers
#5This seems like a huge amount of effort to get malware onto a computer. While it seems technically plausible, the steps involved (getting a compromised app onto devices, harvesting contact and location data, waiting for a subset of the infected population to speed, then delivering more malware to them via email) makes me rather dubious.
Re: Malware scam appears to use GPS data to catch speeding Pennsylvania drivers
#6Just drivers in one locality? Sounds more like the police network has been compromised than GPS capable malware.
The malware could have some local vector, I highly doubt the police network would have that level of access *scared emoji.
Re: Malware scam appears to use GPS data to catch speeding Pennsylvania drivers
#7Just drivers in one locality? Sounds more like the police network has been compromised than GPS capable malware.
The redacted email also says it contains a picture of the license plate. How could that come from a cracked phone?
It sounds more likely that some photo based speed trap has been compromised.
Re: Malware scam appears to use GPS data to catch speeding Pennsylvania drivers
#8Just drivers in one locality? Sounds more like the police network has been compromised than GPS capable malware.
The redacted email also says it contains a picture of the license plate. How could that come from a cracked phone? It sounds more likely that some photo based speed trap has been compromised.
It's just a link that claims to be a picture of the license plate. The link's actual target delivers malware to the device.
Re: Malware scam appears to use GPS data to catch speeding Pennsylvania drivers
#9I'd be interested to see what kind of malware it is. Is it just a EXE that does bad things to your computer but still requires executing and clicking the confirm button (since it is probably not signed). If so, what decicdes does it target? I always feel fairly save on my iPhone because there are currently no exploits we know about (and I think a hacker is smart enough not to let it loose on the wild. He would only use it for targeted attacks since such an exploit is worth a lot of money and would get detected eventually). On my phone I also can't excute Apps from outside the AppStore (I know there are profiles and enterprise certificate but that process is a little suspicious).
Also, if the hacker already conpromised one app, what could he possibly want to infect if the app is already effected.
What I think is that an ad company is too generous with their user data and somebody just bought an ad that only targets that geographical region . That would explain the territori.
Re: Malware scam appears to use GPS data to catch speeding Pennsylvania drivers
#10> it's suspected that the data is coming from an app with permission to track phone GPS data.
I'm not sure why the app stores even allow this feature to be enabled. It seems there should be some additional vetting of applications / fees if they want to enable this incredibly intrusive feature.
Every once in awhile I look the the privacy settings on my iPhone to make sure I didn't accidentally enable this feature.