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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.
I would think fraud, since he's certainly not entitled to that $45k.
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?
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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.
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
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.