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Norway: Soldiers' location history found in data sold by Tamoco

nrk.no

31–40 of 78 posts

Re: Norway: Soldiers' location history found in data sold by Tamoco

#31

Don't allow soldiers to have mobile on restricted ground...

Traffic Analysis. A lot of British intelligence during WW2 was gleamed not from the contents of the messages they intercepted, but rather from tracking who was where and communicating with whom. And if you stop soldiers from using mobile phones on restricted ground, you are just going to have lots of tracks stopping abruptly at the gates and secure facilities identifiable by their lack of emissions. Patterns. There h…

[deleted]

Re: Norway: Soldiers' location history found in data sold by Tamoco

#32
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems to me the scandal is that US military bases allowed people in protected areas to upload GPS traces of their activities, more so than strava showing these along with millions of other traces in their activity maps...

Well, yes, but also that Strava takes this hands-off approach like they're not responsible for the data they collate

What should strava do? Ask each country in the world which areas they want censored?(nuclear power plants, parliament buildings, boarding schools for rich kids, ...?)

Re: Norway: Soldiers' location history found in data sold by Tamoco

#33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, yes, but also that Strava takes this hands-off approach like they're not responsible for the data they collate

What should strava do? Ask each country in the world which areas they want censored?(nuclear power plants, parliament buildings, boarding schools for rich kids, ...?)

Pretty sure that’s how it will end up being, eventually, in the same way GoogleMaps had to buckle.

I can see the smartest countries providing a standard webservice: you-private-company-using-geolocation will have to query a certain area, and get back a shape that you must blur or otherwise suppress. Access to the service should be heavily logged / throttled to avoid mass-scanning, and obviously “customers” will be vetted and forced to sign onerous NDAs. You don’t like the service constraints? Tough shit, here is a law that says use it or be fucked.

Re: Norway: Soldiers' location history found in data sold by Tamoco

#35

This reminds me of an experiment I'd like someone to run on Strava. They had this big scandal some time ago where People identified US military bases simply by having a lot of activity in an otherwise empty area. Now they've added some mojo to prevent this but still sell location data. So how about running the same attack but instead of using the browser and their own website just use the bought location data. I susp…

It wasn't just the US military. There were plenty of jogging circuits around strange desert installations in Syria by joggers who had recently jogged around military bases in Russia, at a time when Russia was claiming no deployments and only observers and things. There were also armchair people wondering about other tracks in various places in the world.

If anyone's interested in how this data can be used, this article breaks it down quite nicely.

https://www.bellingcat.com/resources/how-tos/2018/01/29/stra...

Re: Norway: Soldiers' location history found in data sold by Tamoco

#36

Don't allow soldiers to have mobile on restricted ground...

Traffic Analysis. A lot of British intelligence during WW2 was gleamed not from the contents of the messages they intercepted, but rather from tracking who was where and communicating with whom. And if you stop soldiers from using mobile phones on restricted ground, you are just going to have lots of tracks stopping abruptly at the gates and secure facilities identifiable by their lack of emissions. Patterns. There h…

It was giving that away in his book, rather than any of the other activities at Bletchley Park, that got Gordon Welchman into trouble. Even without any detail as to the techniques used, the fact that he and his group had basically worked out the German operational structure and deployment situation entirely from traffic analysis before the improved Enigma was reliably broken revealed a lot that was meant to be kept secret.

Re: Norway: Soldiers' location history found in data sold by Tamoco

#37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of this rumour about how someone used tinder to triangulate opponent units during an exercise and arty them to shit. Supposedly Finns outwitting Norwegians, but is a anon text so who knows: https://imgur.com/gallery/bySUH

Reminds me of a story I heard: In a conflict, Russia sent SMS to the mothers of Ukrainian(?) soldiers, informing them of their son’s death (pretending to be the Ukrainian government/military). The mothers, distraught, called their son’s cellphone. The increased, clustered cellphone activity near the frontline gave away the unit positions. Shortly after, Russian bombs dropped.

This is sinister genius. Do you have a citation link? I’d love to read more.

Re: Norway: Soldiers' location history found in data sold by Tamoco

#38

A bit of context for non-Norwegians: The government owned media NRK bought location data from Tamoco worth approximately 3,400 USD. The NRK subsidiary NRKbeta has "connected the dots" from that data set. In this article they present how they could track down military personnel visiting restricted military sites in Norway, including the disputed radar installation in Vardø, close to the Russian border.

This reminds me of this rumour about how someone used tinder to triangulate opponent units during an exercise and arty them to shit. Supposedly Finns outwitting Norwegians, but is a anon text so who knows: https://imgur.com/gallery/bySUH

Yeah that'd be Finns and Exercise Trident Juncture 2018

Re: Norway: Soldiers' location history found in data sold by Tamoco

#39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of this rumour about how someone used tinder to triangulate opponent units during an exercise and arty them to shit. Supposedly Finns outwitting Norwegians, but is a anon text so who knows: https://imgur.com/gallery/bySUH

Reminds me of a story I heard: In a conflict, Russia sent SMS to the mothers of Ukrainian(?) soldiers, informing them of their son’s death (pretending to be the Ukrainian government/military). The mothers, distraught, called their son’s cellphone. The increased, clustered cellphone activity near the frontline gave away the unit positions. Shortly after, Russian bombs dropped.

Russian intelligence was also able to counterfeit an app used by Ukrainian artillery forces to track them: https://www.google.com/amp/s/fortune.com/2016/12/22/russia-u...

Re: Norway: Soldiers' location history found in data sold by Tamoco

#40
post #23

Don't allow soldiers to have mobile on restricted ground...

That is akin to not letting them have guns in modern warfare. Or a field shovel.

No, it's more like requiring them to use their issued equipment, over bringing their own guns.
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