[145310] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: Spy/Counterspy
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Christoph Gruber)
Sun Jul 11 11:19:55 2010
From: Christoph Gruber <grisu@guru.at>
In-Reply-To: <EE1FCD77-2A94-48F7-92DE-438565496C1A@lrw.com>
Date: Sun, 11 Jul 2010 17:12:17 +0200
Cc: Pawel <pawel.veselov@gmail.com>,
"Peter Gutmann (alt)" <pgut001.reflector@gmail.com>,
"cryptography@metzdowd.com" <cryptography@metzdowd.com>
--=20
Christoph Gruber
"If privacy is outlawed, only outlaws will have privacy." Phil Zimmermann
Am 10.07.2010 um 12:57 schrieb Jerry Leichter <leichter@lrw.com>:
> On Jul 9, 2010, at 1:00 PM, Pawel wrote:
>=20
>>=20
>> Hi,
>>=20
>> On Apr 27, 2010, at 5:38 AM, "Peter Gutmann (alt)" <pgut001.reflector@gma=
il.com> wrote:
>>=20
>>> GPS tracking units that you can fit to your car to track where your kids=
are taking it.... [T]he sorts of places that'll sell you card skimmers and R=
FID cloners have started selling miniature GPS jammers that plug
>>> into cigarette-lighter sockets on cars.... In other words these are spe=
cifically designed to stop cars from being tracked.
>>>=20
>>> (Some of the more sophisticated trackers will fall back to 3G GSM-based
>>> tracking via UMTS modems if they lose the GPS signal, it'll be intereste=
d to see how long it takes before the jammers are updated to deal with 3G si=
gnals as well, hopefully while leaving 2G intact for phonecalls).
>>=20
>> Just wondering, why wouldn't GPS trackers use 2G to determine the locatio=
n?
>>=20
>> And, also, does it even need a cell service subscription for location det=
ermination, or is it enough to query the cell towers (through some handshake=
protocols) to figure out the proximities and coordinates?
> The 2G stuff wasn't designed to provide location information; that was hac=
ked in (by triangulating information received at multiple towers) after the f=
act. I don't know that anyone has tried to do it from the receiver side - it=
seems difficult, and would probably require building specialized receiver m=
odules (expensive). 3G provides location information as a standard service,=
so it's cheap and easy.
>=20
> The next attack, of course, is to use WiFi base station triangulation. Th=
at's widely and cheaply available already, and quite accurate in many areas.=
(It doesn't work out in the countryside if you're far enough from building=
s, but then you don't have to go more than 60 miles or so from NYC to get to=
areas with no cell service, either.) The signals are much stronger, and yo=
u can get location data with much less information, so jamming would be more=
of a challenge. Still, I expect we'll see that in the spy vs. spy race.
>=20
> I wrote message to Risks - that seems to never have appeared - citing an a=
rticle about GPS spoofing. (I've included it below.) In the spy vs. spy ga=
me, of course, it's much more suspicious if the GPS suddenly stops working t=
han if it shows you've gone to the supermarket. Of course, WiFi (and presum=
ably UMTS equipment, though that might be harder) can also be spoofed. I ha=
d an experience - described in another RISKS article - in which WiFi-based l=
ocation suddenly teleported me from Manhattan to the Riviera - apparently be=
cause I was driving past a cruise ship in dock and its on-board WiFi had bee=
n sampled while it was in Europe.
> -- Jerry
>=20
>=20
> The BBC reports (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8533157.stm) on=
the growing threat of jamming to satellite navigation systems. The fundame=
ntal vulnerability of all the systems - GPS, the Russian Glonass, and the Eu=
ropean Galileo - is the very low power of the transmissions. (Nice analogy:=
A satellite puts out less power than a car headlight, illuminating more th=
an a third of the Earth's surface from 20,000 kilometers.) Jammers - which s=
imply overwhelm the satellite signal - are increasingly available on-line. A=
ccording to the article, low-powered hand-held versions cost less than =C2=A3=
100, run for hours on a battery, and can confuse receivers tens of kilometer=
s away.
>=20
> The newer threat is from spoofers, which can project a false location. Th=
is still costs "thousands", but the price will inevitably come down.
>=20
> A test done in 2008 showed that it was easy to badly spoof ships off the E=
nglish coast, causing them to read locations anywhere from Ireland to Scandi=
navia.
>=20
> Beyond simple hacking - someone is quoted saying "You can consider GPS a l=
ittle like computers before the first virus - if I had stood here before the=
n and cried about the risks, you would've asked 'why would anyone bother?'."=
- among the possible vulnerabilities are to high-value cargo, armored cars,=
and rental cars tracked by GPS. As we build more and more "location-aware" s=
ervices, we are inherently building more "false-location-vulnerable" service=
s at the same time.
>=20
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