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Hackers Can Track Subway Riders' Movements By Smartphone Accelerometer
Patrick O'Neill writes: Tens of millions of daily subway riders around the world can be tracked through their smartphones by a new attack, according to research from China's Nanjing University. The new attack even works underground and doesn't utilize GPS or cell networks. Instead, the attacker steals data from a phone's accelerometer. Because each subway in the world has a unique movement fingerprint, the phone's motion sensor can give away a person's daily movements with up to 92% accuracy.
Read the article closer. Nowhere does it say that a stock phone is susceptible to this sort of attack. The story is presuming that malware has been installed onto the phone. Then, shockingly, software that has been granted access to the hardware can read the hardware. Inertial navigation systems have been in use since at least WW II. And if you have software on the phone that has purloined access to the accelerometer... it would like also have access to the wifi, cell and GPS stuff too.
The privacy concerns are troubling, but I can't help thinking that's pretty cool.
Here in Melbourne, Australia our train system has a unique movement footprint.
Accellerating and breaking for no reason, trains that skip stations or terminate at random ones; this baby's got it all. Good luck decoding the position from that.