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Detection of hidden cellular GPS vehicle trackers

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Re: Detection of hidden cellular GPS vehicle trackers

#61

Post by Hilift »

keyringlight wrote: post #13
Daviey wrote: post #3

Interesting research, but the paper does not address the contribution to the arms race of good vs bad. The criminals will likely use this technique to find legitimate car trackers before stealing the vehicle.

At least for motorbikes, the tactic is to abandon a stolen vehicle for a while after the theft to see if anyone comes for it, then take it to home base. I'd guess it all comes down to how professional an operation you're dealing with, last week a haul was recovered due to a tracker: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1denv9eg6wo

There were probably zero arrests from that seizure. There would probably be more seizures if they simply scanned used vehicle VINs going out for export, but there's no resources for that. The whole "export used garbage vehicles to a new home" market is super shady and is a convenient front for theft.

Re: Detection of hidden cellular GPS vehicle trackers

#62

Post by avidiax »

Scoundreller wrote: post #56
eschneider wrote: post #28

If you're going to try and track this stuff for real, keep in mind most devices like this use motion sensors to go into low-power mode when stationary and only transmit on the move.

We talking MEMS/inertia detection, vibration detection or auto-geo-fencing?

The absolute cheapest thing is just to never update the position unless it significantly changed. Doesn't require anything except the GPS chip.

Bluetooth beacons would need to add an accelerometer, but that undermines their use in pinpointing an object at rest.

Re: Detection of hidden cellular GPS vehicle trackers

#63

Post by logifail »

eschneider wrote: post #28

If you're going to try and track this stuff for real, keep in mind most devices like this use motion sensors to go into low-power mode when stationary and only transmit on the move.

> most devices like this use motion sensors to go into low-power mode when stationary and only transmit on the move

I've been working with (non-covert!) tracker devices for a project, and use exactly this approach, when stationary the tracker goes into low-power mode and sends position once every 12 hours to preserve battery life. When motion is detected, we send regular updates.

Re: Detection of hidden cellular GPS vehicle trackers

#64

Post by GJim »

reactordev wrote: post #38
77pt77 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know if they also monitor bluetooth devices? Like all cars have one and if should be detectable. Also, most recent cars have DCM which are always sending data, including position to the car maker.

Bluetooth doesn’t have the signal strength beyond 20ft. Even then it requires a handshake pairing to send data as every device shares spectrum.

> Bluetooth doesn’t have the signal strength beyond 20ft

Oh dear.

I think you will find a directional antenna can rather increase this by several orders of magnitude.

Re: Detection of hidden cellular GPS vehicle trackers

#65

Post by GJim »

weinzierl wrote: post #19
salawat wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That ship is more than capable of being put back in a bottle with enough political will. We just need to come together enough to get the message heard.

Sure. But hardware trackers is the least of our problems. We'd need a hard crackdown on location privacy in mobile operating systems and the app ecosystem. Good luck with mobilizing enough "political will" when the economic interests of a whole industry is affected.

> We'd need a hard crackdown on location privacy ....... Good luck with mobilizing enough "political will"

Genuine LOL

Here we have the GDPR. It works. (Contrary to much tech-bro propaganda spouted on here).

Re: Detection of hidden cellular GPS vehicle trackers

#66

Post by closewith »

sodality2 wrote: post #6
ge96 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's not related to flock safety (company) is it?

Yep. Their brand of ALPR cameras have spread like a plague very quickly all over the US

Private ANPR in public spaces is unlawful in the entire EU. The US needs to get a GDPR equivalent to protect basic human rights from corporate surveillance.

Re: Detection of hidden cellular GPS vehicle trackers

#67

Post by justinc8687 »

reactordev wrote: post #38
77pt77 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know if they also monitor bluetooth devices? Like all cars have one and if should be detectable. Also, most recent cars have DCM which are always sending data, including position to the car maker.

Bluetooth doesn’t have the signal strength beyond 20ft. Even then it requires a handshake pairing to send data as every device shares spectrum.

Way back in the day (2010), I worked for a company using Bluetooth scanners to measure traffic speeds. We could get about a 500' range with custom hardware.

The real fun part at the time was that every Bluetooth device pretty much was always in pairing mode, and that MACs didn't rotate...

Eventually those both happened, but in ways beyond my comprehension (I worked on the software side), the hardware guys could still pick up the signals to track cars.

Re: Detection of hidden cellular GPS vehicle trackers

#68

Post by weinzierl »

GJim wrote: post #65
weinzierl wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. But hardware trackers is the least of our problems. We'd need a hard crackdown on location privacy in mobile operating systems and the app ecosystem. Good luck with mobilizing enough "political will" when the economic interests of a whole industry is affected.

> We'd need a hard crackdown on location privacy ....... Good luck with mobilizing enough "political will" Genuine LOL Here we have the GDPR. It works. (Contrary to much tech-bro propaganda spouted on here).

I live in Europe and helped introducing GDPR. It is good at what it was designed for: being a pain for companies that collect data en masse and cannot tolerate the slightest friction (think Facebook).

For everyone it else there are ways. Read about the six legal bases for processing personal data, especially consent and legitimate interest. You will be surprised.

Re: Detection of hidden cellular GPS vehicle trackers

#69

Post by fsflover »

weinzierl wrote: post #17
fsflover wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This looks like security (or privacy) nihilism: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27897975

The security nihilism is thinking you'd need special hardware to stalk someone, when a malicious app on the victims phone does the job.

The security nihilism is thinking "why try to defend yourself if there are so many attack vectors". Also, my phone has no malicious apps. (It's a GNU/Linux phone.)

Re: Detection of hidden cellular GPS vehicle trackers

#70

Post by potato3732842 »

Jalad wrote: post #36
potato3732842 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some of the Fani Willis court proceedings they dredged up ~10yo cell phone location data like it was nothing about people who weren't relevant enough to warrant special attention 10yr ago.

Is that accurate? The Willis proceedings were about events around 2021, so that's only 4 years at best

They introduced stuff from a really long time ago as evidince of people knowing each other or dealing with each other. Like "you were at X's house then so clearly you knew them" type thing. I don't recall exactly what the context was because the big takeaway was the retention of records.
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