101–110 of 141 posts
I love that the skills I learned in the 80s are still relevant today. Interacting with serial ports. AT commands. This stuff hasn't changed much.
Being able to communicate with arbitrary electronics using the $30 Bus Pirate device seems like a very fair price.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> " Also, it would be nice to fool the GPS through a jammer that emits false signals in order to make it report a fake location, after placing cameras at that place to record whoever shows up. " First : don't confuse jamming with spoofing. Jamming is extremely easy to perform by any idiot, while spoofing GPS is significantly harder https://archive.fosdem.org/2019/schedule/event/sdr_gps/ Second : keep in mind that bot…
> while spoofing GPS is significantly harder You are very wrong. Spoofing GPS is downloading a file, and then running a commandline program with a hackrf attached. The *only* hard part is getting a HackRF or other TX capable SDR. Download and compile https://github.com/osqzss/gps-sdr-sim Download today's ephermis https://cddis.nasa.gov/archive/gnss/data/daily/ run: gps-sdr-sim -e $EPHERMISFILE -l $LAT,$LON,$ALT And,…
Having a broken VCR is significantly easier than downloading a file and then running a commandline program with a hackrf attached.
Wow, didn’t know EFF went so deep on investigations like this. Top notch!
This is not really deep, TBH. This is 5-6 minutes of work for someone who does this habitually. They didn't even dump the firmware of the PIC running in there to share it for some fun RE.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They're normally wired in somewhere behind the glovebox or steering column, and can be pretty hard to find. I had one on a car I bought, and it kept draining the car battery whenever I left it more than a few days. I wasted many hours buying new batteries, testing alternators, and tracking down leakage currents before finding it consuming nearly a watt continuously.
Did you mean 1 Watt or actually 1 Amp? 1 Watt would be rather modest and shouldn't drain you battery within a week, 1 Amp certainly is another story.
This happens even if you drive the car every day. Since a full charge of a lead acid battery is 12+ hours, if you only drive the car half an hour per day, then each day you are discharging more than you charge.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe this speaks more about yourself than EFF. You are judging a 79-employee non-profit based on a single article from one of them. There's also the fact that the article did not cheat in any way, but reflected one's mindset while discovering such an issue. A bit of trickery, sure, but what's life without plot twists?
No, I'm not judging them, I just said my view of them took a tumble. When I feel tricked, I lose trust in whoever tricked me. And negative trust is often lasting. It's hard to gain trust and very easy to lose it. BUT: I didn't read the whole article. I read kogepathic's comment first, which gave away the twist and framed the headline as clickbait, and I went along with that. But I now see it's as you say. Lesson lear…
Hmm, my trust in this article is eroded by the fact that they don't seem to know much about hardware. They didn't connect the grounds together (so of course they had junk data), and they appeared a bit surprised at having to change the baud rate. I guess calling the company and giving them the serial was what solved the mystery in the end, but the hardware investigation left a lot to be desired (and was fruitless in…
Other comments: those jumpers can be unreliable, and I'm surprised they managed to solder with those leads. In any case, it was clearly a learning experience for them, so that's good.
Over here in the EU any cellular device should contain a SIM card which must be registered to someone or some company, therefore it can be used to track the owner; is that different in the US? The article doesn't mention any SIM card present. If I discovered such a tracking device in my car I'd immediately look for the card, get its number and find the owner. Also, it would be nice to fool the GPS through a jammer th…
> " Also, it would be nice to fool the GPS through a jammer that emits false signals in order to make it report a fake location, after placing cameras at that place to record whoever shows up. " First : don't confuse jamming with spoofing. Jamming is extremely easy to perform by any idiot, while spoofing GPS is significantly harder https://archive.fosdem.org/2019/schedule/event/sdr_gps/ Second : keep in mind that bot…
I recall seeing someone's project that did exactly that: transmitting at a very short distance a radio signal that spoofed a number of satellites so that the GPS receiver would report completely bogus positions. Anyway, that would be unnecessary as I completely missed that the GPS receiver is connected through a serial port, therefore spoofing NMEA strings would be much easier.
I love that the skills I learned in the 80s are still relevant today. Interacting with serial ports. AT commands. This stuff hasn't changed much.
I wonder how common this UART protocol is in electronics? Being able to communicate with arbitrary electronics using the $30 Bus Pirate device seems like a very fair price.
This article title is FUD and the EFF is doing themselves a disservice in publishing this. The GPS tracking device had absolutely no connection to the individual being an EFF supporter, and was in fact entirely benign (if unknown to the vehicle owner). What we need from the EFF: a serious discussion about anti-theft vehicle tracking and privacy (e.g. a list of brands/dealerships installing these devices, how/where to…
If you want to read FUD into it, you can, but the fact is that (a) a person found a GPS tracker in her car and (b) she is an EFF supporter, which led her to contact them and get it examined. So the title is entirely justified, if a bit clickbaity. But to then say they should have refrained from publishing the article is exaggerated. Actually I was glad I read it and appalled that it seems to be routine for car dealer…
I dont even think GDPR data protection laws cover that data grab!
This article title is FUD and the EFF is doing themselves a disservice in publishing this. The GPS tracking device had absolutely no connection to the individual being an EFF supporter, and was in fact entirely benign (if unknown to the vehicle owner). What we need from the EFF: a serious discussion about anti-theft vehicle tracking and privacy (e.g. a list of brands/dealerships installing these devices, how/where to…
I think your comment is also a bit too harsh. The headline seems to indicate that an EFF member is being tracked, but it doesn't actually make that allegation, it just states a fact and the article explains how they found out it's probably benign.
Title should make a reasonable effort to summarise the content and allegation of the article. It's not the case here.