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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

#41

Post by 13of40 »

quartz wrote: post #37
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.

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 command set, so you would dial the number on your phone and flick a switch on the modem to make it connect and everything would be sent to the other side verbatim. The "+++" is the escape sequence you send to a Hayes modem to break it into command mode, the "AT" is the prefix for the command (attention?), and "H" means "hang up". IIRC, puritans would say "ATH0" because the "0" represents some particular state to hang up to, but it's the same as "ATH".

Re: Mystery GPS Tracker on a Supporter’s Car

#42

Post by skibbityboop »

> Is the sky-link GPS device still sending location data back to a Sky Link server?

As someone who used to work in that industry, no, it's not sending location data. You don't activate the SIM until you have someone who is going to pay for the service, otherwise you're losing money for no reason.

We'd get that question often though, someone activating a device hoping they'd be able to see everywhere it was for the last month.

Re: Mystery GPS Tracker on a Supporter’s Car

#43

Post by wallfacer120 »

jmole wrote: post #15

I had a mystery tracker installed in a car I purchased as well: https://fccid.io/2AEB4AMV01/User-Manual/Users-Manual-3928375 The dealer even added a $250 fee to "remove" this device, but I found it was still installed, so I think I ended up footing the bill for the device itself. The device is ostensibly to protect inventory from loss, but it seems like they are incentivizing dealers to leave these in cars to capture…

Who is "they"?

Re: Mystery GPS Tracker on a Supporter’s Car

#44

Post by wallfacer120 »

35fbe7d3d5b9 wrote: post #35

> Several weeks ago, an EFF supporter brought her car to a mechanic, and found a mysterious device wired into her car under her driver's seat If I saw this device under my seat I'd assume it was part of some electronic system and never touch it. The only thing that I'd see that would make me go "huh" would be CDMA – and even then I would probably assume it was part of my car's infotainment system like my old Saab's O…

I see three possibilities, from most to least likely: (a) completely fabricated by the subject of the story (perhaps because they are sincerely convinced they are being followed by someone and are seeking to furnish "proof"); (b) it's anti-theft; (c)(super super super unlikely) its a personal matter.

Re: Mystery GPS Tracker on a Supporter’s Car

#45

Post by duxup »

taldo wrote: post #25

Had they remembered to connect the ground reference for the Bus Pirate, they would've had a much easier time reading the data back :) OTOH: how is that even legal? I can't fully grasp how privacy is perceived as a sacred basic right in the US, but then they have dealers tracking people's cars for repossession purposes...

It’s not really clear it is tracking anything so no reason I can think of it as illegal.

Re: Mystery GPS Tracker on a Supporter’s Car

#46

Post by rootusrootus »

guenthert wrote: post #27
kube-system wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple Maps keeps working fine when I invariably drop my phone under the seat in my car. GPS receivers are pretty good these days and are capable of picking up very weak signals.

Is the Maps application getting the position data from GPS alone or rather from accelerometer plus earlier good reading (using GPS or cell tower known position) or some fancy sensor data merging (Kalman filter)?

Or if it's attached with CarPlay it will get GPS from the head unit's GPS receiver (assuming there is one, I don't know for sure that all CarPlay head units have their own GPS).

Re: Mystery GPS Tracker on a Supporter’s Car

#47

Post by rootusrootus »

taldo wrote: post #25

Had they remembered to connect the ground reference for the Bus Pirate, they would've had a much easier time reading the data back :) OTOH: how is that even legal? I can't fully grasp how privacy is perceived as a sacred basic right in the US, but then they have dealers tracking people's cars for repossession purposes...

It's not illegal if it's not actually tracking you. The ones installed for repo purposes on sketchy car deals aren't secret, the customer signs paperwork acknowledging their existence. At that point they don't have a lot of choice, of course, their options are limited by circumstance.

Re: Mystery GPS Tracker on a Supporter’s Car

#48

Post by lalopalota »

taldo wrote: post #25

Had they remembered to connect the ground reference for the Bus Pirate, they would've had a much easier time reading the data back :) OTOH: how is that even legal? I can't fully grasp how privacy is perceived as a sacred basic right in the US, but then they have dealers tracking people's cars for repossession purposes...

Well, they aren't tracking a person. They are tracking the vehicle, which is their property until it is paid off.

Re: Mystery GPS Tracker on a Supporter’s Car

#50

Post by smilespray »

bragr wrote: post #13
dmitrygr wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Gotta agree with you there. "Connect to the UART, remember UART requires a ground, throw some AT commands at it, give up, and ask the company about a serial number" hardly seems like a deep dive.

In fairness, expectations are a bit high around these parts. Maybe this article wasn't written for us.

What would be enough? Decapping all chips, dumping and decompiling the firmware, figuring out what the people who made the device had for breakfast?

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