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Man Spoofs GPS To Fake Shop Visits For Profit, Gets Caught (nikkei.com)
AmiMoJo writes: A man in Japan used GPS spoofing to fake 2.7 million visits to shops in the Aeon Kyushu chain. Each visit rewarded him with two "WAON" points, with the total worth around 5.3 million yen ($45,000). The man used 45 laptops to continually spoof GPS readings and launch the Aeon Kyushu app, collecting two points each time.
but the assholes who spoof phone numbers keep cashing their checks.
I would think fraud, since he's certainly not entitled to that $45k.
Do I really have to say it? Slashdot has been running for, what, 20 years now, and you still haven't worked out you should RTFA before posting?
"suspected misappropriation of electromagnetic records and use of the same." From google translate of the linked article.
...
RTFA? Why should I be first?
to fake 2.7 million visits to shops
Really? Let's see: 365 days / year, 18 hours / day (he's got to stop for gas sometime), let's say 45 sites (45 laptops, and I'm ASS-U-ME-ing, and let's say they're all in a circle. (It's been done before.)
;-) (Man, that's a cheap life. They oughta give him a free soda or something.)
Around in the US, I thought a "visit" lasted an hour. Since he's "going" to different store locations, this shouldn't be a problem. And 0 seconds at the store -- he drives up to the front door, the GPS reads his location, and drives off.
For convenience sake, it always takes 10 minutes to reach the next store.
It takes 10 * 45 = 450 minutes for a 45 store transit, or 7.5 hours. Say 7, so 3 complete rotations per day. That's 21 hours (a bit over my 18 hours / day, but he hits a lot of green lights. Or pedestrians, your choice.) That's 3x45 = 135 stores per day. In a year that's 49,000 store visits.
So 2.7 Million visits would take 55 years. So a la Mythbusters: CONFIRMED.
And so he really thought he could get away with it? A million visits (over multiple accounts, that's what the 45 computers were for. Yeah I know. But how much did THEY cost?) That's like the guys in Germany who were getting paid to produce solar power. It was fine, but they noticed one company producing it at night. Bright moon I guess.
I've also heard of geniuses who go to WalMart (or wherever) buy thousands of dollars or merchandise and hand the clerk a million dollar bill. AND WANT THEIR CHANGE.
If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I think the penalty should go to the company with the stupid idea to give anyone anything worth money based solely on GPS data.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
If you invest other people's money, you actually have to make a profit to pay them out the return you promised. If you run a Ponzi scheme, you can promise double digit returns, and all you have to do is keep finding more suckers and use their money to pay out to earlier investors, before you take the lot and skip town. They require two completely different skills: investment savvy vs. being a charismatic salesman.
How exactly would you propose making a quick legal $45.000 with GPS spoofing?
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
According to TFA the specific laws are misappropriation and misuse of electromagnetic records. Basically exploiting a flaw in a computer system that you should reasonably have known was not intended, similar to using an exploit to gain access to a system.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
He better be using them cheap laptops for less than $1000 a piece.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
The GPS spoofing was probably done entirely in software. I suspect the laptops were used to emulate mobile devices.
Fraud
A false representation of a matter of fact—whether by words or by conduct, by false or misleading allegations, or by concealment of what should have been disclosed—that deceives and is intended to deceive another so that the individual will act upon it to her or his legal injury.
Define "visit the store". Did the TOS specifically say a "physical" visit? You might assume that, but how did the company choose (they chose) to measure when a visit took place? That's why contracts and TOS's are so damn long.
But how many people are doing this and simply not being as greedy? How can any one trust a business that leaves themselves open so willingly?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
How exactly would you propose making a quick legal $45.000 with GPS spoofing?
Market it to cheating husbands with suspicious wives.
There were also those ad bars you could download and every 60 seconds they would display another ad an you would get a smaller amount like $.01 for each rotation.
However it 7th grade again when I was at the height of my scheming ways I downloaded my account's ad bars on every computer in the school room and would show up early and run them on 50 computers roughly until everyone else showed up
I was a few years older than you i think, but I did one better on this; ran packet capture software to figure out exactly what the ad bar was saying to the server, then wrote scripts to simulate it without having to show any ads. It meant I could leave them running 24/7 on whichever computers I liked without having to worry about whether anyone was using them. This came in even more useful later on when they started monitoring for mouse movement to make sure you were actually using the computer; the script could simulate those just as easily.
I don't think they ever caught on. Cheques kept coming in right up until I lost interest due to the increasing complexity/security of the ad bar. I wasn't too worried about being caught anyway since, like you, I was a minor at the time.
And this has to be amateur level. Why 45 laptops instead of hundreds of VMs on a decent workstation/server hardware?