Find You: Building a stealth AirTag clone
positive.security
Find You: Building a stealth AirTag clone
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Re: Find You: Building a stealth AirTag clone
#2Link to the repo: https://github.com/positive-security/find-you
Re: Find You: Building a stealth AirTag clone
#3Other trackers don't tell you they are tracking you though, what about those.
Re: Find You: Building a stealth AirTag clone
#4Other trackers don't tell you they are tracking you though, what about those.
I understand your point and it's completely valid, but I think the difference is that Apple is mainstreaming personal tracking in a way that other companies could only dream of, and in doing so is also mainstreaming awareness of how technologies like this might be abused. Because of this, Apple has painted a giant target on their back even though they're arguably handling privacy issues better than anyone else in this space.
On the bright side, the end result of this is that AirTags will be safer for everyone, and competitors with tracking products not designed for secret spying will be forced to step up their privacy games.
Re: Find You: Building a stealth AirTag clone
#5Other trackers don't tell you they are tracking you though, what about those.
If they need to rely on their own GPS and internet uplink rather than just bluetooth, they would be much more expensive
Re: Find You: Building a stealth AirTag clone
#6Why not build your own tracker that doesn't rely on Apple. You only have to have GPS, LoRaWAN, MCU, battery, and antenna, That's about it.
Re: Find You: Building a stealth AirTag clone
#7Other trackers don't tell you they are tracking you though, what about those.
If they need to rely on their own GPS and internet uplink rather than just bluetooth, they would be much more expensive
But not that much more even in small quantities.
If you exclude the time to dev the software, design the PCB, and assemble the tracker then you can knock up a NB-IOT module + GPS module + Microcontroller & supporting parts (to tie the two modules together) for about $30-$35 in small quantities, keep your data usage low and you can throw in a pre-paid IOT-NB sim for about $15.
EDIT: Its not gonna be as small as a AirTag, But if you wanted to tag something like a car you could get it into a small enough box to easily hide under it.
EDIT The 2nd: Throw in a movement detector, keep everything asleep unless its moved, before firing up the GPS/modem write your code so not to power up the GPS/Modem up unless a certain time as passed since the last known location fix, when you do fire up the GPS compare the location to the last known location so you only need to phone home if the distance as changed by a certain amount and you could get a decent battery life.
(not that I've thought about this...)
Re: Find You: Building a stealth AirTag clone
#8Why not build your own tracker that doesn't rely on Apple. You only have to have GPS, LoRaWAN, MCU, battery, and antenna, That's about it.
You also need a way to communicate back the tracking results, which presumably implies a SIM card and thus more opportunity to get detected (and linked back to you). But yes, in theory you can (and always could) do that.
The barrier to entry would be a lot higher though, as all that's needed here is 'microcontroller with Bluetooth'. And that really makes it dangerously easy.
Re: Find You: Building a stealth AirTag clone
#9Why not build your own tracker that doesn't rely on Apple. You only have to have GPS, LoRaWAN, MCU, battery, and antenna, That's about it.
You also need a way to communicate back the tracking results, which presumably implies a SIM card and thus more opportunity to get detected (and linked back to you). But yes, in theory you can (and always could) do that. The barrier to entry would be a lot higher though, as all that's needed here is 'microcontroller with Bluetooth'. And that really makes it dangerously easy.
> You also need a way to communicate back the tracking results, which presumably implies a SIM card and thus more opportunity to get detected (and linked back to you). But yes, in theory you can (and always could) do that.
I think gp included the lorawan for that purpose. No SIM required.
Re: Find You: Building a stealth AirTag clone
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
You also need a way to communicate back the tracking results, which presumably implies a SIM card and thus more opportunity to get detected (and linked back to you). But yes, in theory you can (and always could) do that. The barrier to entry would be a lot higher though, as all that's needed here is 'microcontroller with Bluetooth'. And that really makes it dangerously easy.
> You also need a way to communicate back the tracking results, which presumably implies a SIM card and thus more opportunity to get detected (and linked back to you). But yes, in theory you can (and always could) do that. I think gp included the lorawan for that purpose. No SIM required.
Ah right, I had overlooked that, never having seen the word "lorawan" before.
I honestly have no idea how widespread LoRaWAN is, but I would be very surprised if it came anywhere close to the coverage you can achieve using Apple users carrying your uplinks around unwittingly. (Especially if you are attempting to track an Apple user.)