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Dutch Researchers Show Connected Cars Can Be Cheaply Tracked (ieee.org)
schwit1 writes to point out an experiment undertaken on the campus of the Netherlands' University of Twente, in which two wireless sensing stations were able to cheaply pinpoint a target vehicle equipped with "smart" V2X systems nearly half the time, and track it (albeit less precisely) even more, according to Jonathan Petit, Principal Scientist at software security company Security Innovation.
"You can build a real-time tracking system using off-the-shelf devices with minimum sophistication," says Petit. In a paper to be presented at the Black Hat Europe security conference in November, he describes being able to place a security vehicle within either the residential or the business zones of the campus with 78 percent accuracy, and even locate it on individual roads 40 percent of the time.
The tracking here was accomplished by listening for transmissions emitted over using 802.11p at 5.9 GHz. Says the article:
Petit is now working with Ford, GM, and other carmakers to develop strategies to help secure connected cars. One interesting finding from his experiment was that a Manhattan-style grid of roads makes it difficult for potential attackers because there are more connections between the intersections. "This raises the idea of privacy-enhancing road networks, where cities are designed with the concept of privacy at their core," he says.
and you can guess the rest.
New privacy violating technologies come along every few years. Road network layouts last centuries. It would be very foolish to let privacy-attack-of-the-day heavily influence your road layouts.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
Seems like police cars are loaded with networked tech nowadays. Has anyone put together a tool, maybe a raspberry with a software defined radio dongle, to detect the presence of police vehicles in the near vicinity?
At the least, if you snooped the traffic of cellphones that congregate at the local station you could come up with a list of IEMI numbers and look for those being broadcast nearby. Although that's a lot more effort than just knowing what frequencies and protocols they use for their in-car electronics.
You don't need fancy communications networks to do any of the "driver safety" things V2V koolaid drinkers are talking about. They are already being done better and cheaper today in production vehicles with sensors that never have to rely on other vehicles or things equipped with working transmitters.
Technology has already been leap-frogged and made redundant by advances in computing/CV.
"V2X" is now just a massive waste of time and money to enrich industry and serve as yet another ridiculous excuse to eviscerate any remaining rights of individuals not to be stalked en-masse by governments, corporations and individuals. This is nothing more than a solution in search of a problem.
Nearly everyone I know carries a personal beacon which broadcasts an uniquely identifiable signature every few seconds. I suppose this is for the people who took the batteries out of their phones before going to the tin foil hat store.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
An internet-connected device can be tracked? Wow, who knew?
Seriously, does this come as a surprise to anyone? It shouldn't.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Large commercial aircraft have to have a transponder that transmits (among other things) their height, bearing, speed and position. Each one has a unique identifier (ICAO24 hex code). All aircraft will be required to be equipped with these things after 2020. You can track them with a home mode aerial, a Raspberry Pi & a DVB-T dongle, using SDR. It's all broadcast in the clear (it has to be - the logistics of making sure everyone has keys for decryption would be a nightmare).
“You can build a real-time tracking system using off-the-shelf devices with minimum sophistication,” says Petit.
"However, there is nothing to stop anyone else from also tuning in to the messages using a wireless ‘sniffing station’."
Yeah, we all pretty much knew this. Also, maybe the guy should try three stations instead of two, which is basically what people found out what worked best eons ago. Yawn.