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Mystery GPS Tracker on a Supporter’s Car

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Re: Mystery GPS Tracker on a Supporter’s Car

#121

Post by sdoering »

qwertox wrote: post #111
sdoering wrote: post #90

Reading this and reading the comments I became aware again how lucky I am to be born in a place with strong customer protection and strong data protection laws. Wow. I imagine a dealership doing this here in Germany. Even repossession isn't that easy in Germany. In Germany, you have to go the official route and get the vehicle seized by the bailiff. Installing a tracking device without clear informed consent would go…

Isn't it common now for our car manufacturers to store a log of GPS data in an ECU? I could have sworn I've once read about this around three years ago. This German article [0] from 2022-02-03 for example mentions cars storing some usage data: > In summary, it can be said that data is constantly being recorded for all cars, which allows conclusions to be drawn about the usage profile, the intensity of use, the number…

Thanks for the info. Would not have known this without your pointer. Can't imagine this being legal under GDPR. But as long as nobody goes to court over this (and I would have expected the ADAC doing this as it sees itself as a representative lobby group for German drivers).

Interesting that they don't.

Re: Mystery GPS Tracker on a Supporter’s Car

#122

Post by unwind »

sva_ wrote: post #101
mig39 wrote: post #8

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.

UARTs are super important still, nothing old or obsolete about that tech. It's simply still useful, and a sensible way of doing serial communication in a simple way.

The Pirate is awesome, and was rather magical when it first appeared (I bought mine in 2010), but nowadays I would just use a USB/UART adapter [1]. They're cheap as ... something cheap on Amazon, and simpler since they're special-purpose.

[1]: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=usb+uart&crid=1JQRTOTBVDDCW&spref...

Re: Mystery GPS Tracker on a Supporter’s Car

#123

Post by spicyjpeg »

sva_ wrote: post #101
mig39 wrote: post #8

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.

Serial ports are still ubiquitous in embedded electronics. Crack open any non-trivial device and you will probably find a serial port, sometimes along with JTAG or SWD, on an unpopulated connector or on test pads, spitting out debug logs.

And it makes sense from an engineering standpoint. Equipment for interfacing to a serial port, even in 2022, is widely available (you can get a basic TTL-level dongle for the price of a coffee) and pretty much every microcontroller/SoC has at least one hardware UART. If you want to see what your code prints to stdout while it's running on real hardware you could either implement a fancy redirection layer that sends logs over whatever interface your device has (and hope there are no bugs in it) or just use the built-in UART, wire it up to an off-the-shelf dongle and call it a day.

Re: Mystery GPS Tracker on a Supporter’s Car

#124

Post by markus92 »

sdoering wrote: post #121
qwertox wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it common now for our car manufacturers to store a log of GPS data in an ECU? I could have sworn I've once read about this around three years ago. This German article [0] from 2022-02-03 for example mentions cars storing some usage data: > In summary, it can be said that data is constantly being recorded for all cars, which allows conclusions to be drawn about the usage profile, the intensity of use, the number…

Thanks for the info. Would not have known this without your pointer. Can't imagine this being legal under GDPR. But as long as nobody goes to court over this (and I would have expected the ADAC doing this as it sees itself as a representative lobby group for German drivers). Interesting that they don't.

Storing it on the ECU is allowed as long as it isn't actually collected/used, right?

Re: Mystery GPS Tracker on a Supporter’s Car

#125

Post by teknopaul »

kogepathic wrote: post #118
teknopaul wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't know "how many cars these devices are installed in" They did investigate "a single individual who was not targeted" You can't write an article about something you haven't done. They explain why they did it in the article. FUD is fear uncertainty and doubt, they did the exact opposite. Dispelled the FUD with an investigation. And then published it.

> FUD is fear uncertainty and doubt, they did the exact opposite. Dispelled the FUD with an investigation. And then published it. Please point out the original FUD the EFF is refuting in this article. Their title is sensationalist, a more accurate title would be, IMO, "a car dealership installed a third-party GPS tracking device in a vehicle" but anything more is a stretch because they have n=1 here. But you can see…

I interpreted it as the author and car owner had fear uncertainty and doubt, about what the tracker was for. As we probably all did when clicking the title. And they dispelled it.

The case they investigated was one that came to them, from one of their own, they explain that.

Research costs time and money. I don't think you should _expect_ that donors money is spent, when after investigating this isolated case, nothing too nefarious was found. As you say, geolocating vehicles is not new or novel.

It's a good write up of the work that was done, and the thought process, engaging and short, and as I mentioned above, you don't always want a spoiler in the title.

Re: Mystery GPS Tracker on a Supporter’s Car

#126

Post by ibejoeb »

kogepathic wrote: post #76

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…

Re: vehicle tracking and privacy standard in 2024, by U.S. law, is going to be pervasive tracking. It will include driver behavior analysis, perspiration and respiration sensors, and have intervention capabilities. This is all in HR 3684 Section 24220.

Full text: https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/3684... Relevant section: https://archive.ph/eMF8Y#toc-idb8cfafb0-6273-428e-a005-03391... HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29427068

Re: Mystery GPS Tracker on a Supporter’s Car

#127

Post by DonHopkins »

tallanvor wrote: post #73
quartz wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seeing AT commandes described as the "way that humans and machines can interact with a cellular modem" made me feel old because they didn't just say "remember AT commands from manually driving your Hayes 9600baud dial up modem?"

9600? Try 1200 baud! Of course, this guarantees that someone will chime in talking about starting off with a 300 baud modem that worked like they showed in WarGames.

Modems used to cost a dollar a baud, about $100 for a 110 baud modem, $300 for a 300 baud modem, and $1200 for a 1200 baud modem.

Re: Mystery GPS Tracker on a Supporter’s Car

#128

Post by DonHopkins »

13of40 wrote: post #41
quartz wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seeing AT commandes described as the "way that humans and machines can interact with a cellular modem" made me feel old because they didn't just say "remember AT commands from manually driving your Hayes 9600baud dial up modem?"

I remember when the Hayes command set started to become the standard, because for a while you could get on a group chat on a BBS and press +++ATH to make the outbound modems hang everyone up. I think there was an AT command to remap that pattern, but it wasn't adopted by all the BBS software right away. Edit: To clarify, before then you would have something like a 300 baud modem that didn't have an out-of-band comman…

The DC Hayes Micromodem II for the Apple ][ had its own weird command codes using control characters, with ^A at the "attention" command.

    IN#3 (Apple ][ command to hook input from slot #3)
    ^A ^F (modem command to set full duplex)
    ^A ^Q (modem command to pulse dial the following number)
    ^A ^Z (modem command to hang up)
https://mirrors.apple2.org.za/ftp.apple.asimov.net/documenta...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayes_Microcomputer_Products#E...

https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/10264598...

https://www.ebay.com/itm/393165436881

Later on once the Hayes AT command set took over and BBSs became popular in the 80's, there was a flat $25/month subscription service called "PC Pursuit" that had banks of modems in different cities connected by a network, which you could dial up locally, then connect over the network to another modem, and dial out to a local BBS system. It was a subsidiary of Telenet, which spun off from BBN, and later was a subsidiary of U.S. Sprint.

http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/library/CONCEPTS/SERVICES/PCPU...

https://bbs.fandom.com/wiki/PC_Pursuit

https://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/tom-keating/voip/pc-pursuit---t...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telenet#PC_Pursuit

There was a fun game you could play called "PC Roulette", in which you first connected to a remote modem with the PCP command, then issued the command "A/" directly to the modem, to redial the last number somebody else dialed on that modem!

Re: Mystery GPS Tracker on a Supporter’s Car

#129

Post by rurban »

pantalaimon wrote: post #69
rurban wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you configure modems still the same way. you still have modems in IoT devices. what changed are the capabilities, esp. the power states. these trackers can sleep most of the time, only wake up periodically, so they can survive on battery for several years. most sensors are connected via I2C to the CPU. some weird ones via SPI. most GPS sensors are different, they connect mostly via UART. so you can connect to them di…

> some weird^W fast ones via SPI ftfy

block devices, yes. my GNSS sensor needs SPI btw.

Re: Mystery GPS Tracker on a Supporter’s Car

#130

Post by kogepathic »

teknopaul wrote: post #125
kogepathic wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> FUD is fear uncertainty and doubt, they did the exact opposite. Dispelled the FUD with an investigation. And then published it. Please point out the original FUD the EFF is refuting in this article. Their title is sensationalist, a more accurate title would be, IMO, "a car dealership installed a third-party GPS tracking device in a vehicle" but anything more is a stretch because they have n=1 here. But you can see…

I interpreted it as the author and car owner had fear uncertainty and doubt, about what the tracker was for. As we probably all did when clicking the title. And they dispelled it. The case they investigated was one that came to them, from one of their own, they explain that. Research costs time and money. I don't think you should _expect_ that donors money is spent, when after investigating this isolated case, nothin…

> I interpreted it as the author and car owner had fear uncertainty and doubt, about what the tracker was for.

Something between two private individuals, which was resolved through the subsequent investigation. No need to write an article about this.

> As we probably all did when clicking the title.

FUD is generally a strategy to influence perception by disseminating negative and dubious or false information and a manifestation of the appeal to fear. [1]

> you don't always want a spoiler in the title.

The GPS tracker is not mysterious (they identified the source and likely purpose), and the individual's support for the EFF did not contribute to the presence of the GPS tracker in their car.

Could you clarify how the title accurately reflects the situation in light of this?

> Research costs time and money.

Indeed, and FUD is free.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty,_and_doubt

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