Inside a low budget consumer hardware espionage implant (2018)
ha.cking.ch
ha.cking.ch
Incidentally, my theory about the website and product is that this is a firmware reuse of a fleet tracking product. The manufacturer is likely an electronics manufacturing outfit that adapted the layout to match the new application but didn't have in-house firmware developers and instead reused a popular low-end fleet tracker firmware for the same chip. These are used for stuff like taxi dispatch or package pickup so you can see the entire fleet on a map and call whoever is closest to your destination. It doesn't need precise location.
If there is a standard baseline though then the OP's advice doesn't meaningfully change, it just becomes "If the cable draws current over the baseline with nothing attached, dissect it" rather then "if it draws any at all". Any spy chip would still have to be on top of whatever else is needed to make the cable work at all, so it's not really a different problem unless standard cables have enough delta between them to hide a spy chip drain in. And even if that's true between manufacturers, if within a single manufacturer cables were pretty steady that might merely become a reason to source exclusively from one/a few reliable ones that stable baseline draws can be established for?
Incidentally, my theory about the
website and product is that this
is a firmware reuse of a fleet
tracking product.
That said, low data SIM cards are getting more and more feasible. My stepdad runs an android at a remote location for weather data, and with something like hourly, double digit count byte uploads he stays under the monthly limit to where the sim is essentially free.
At the consumer level, low data SIMs in Canada aren’t price competitive, hence my desire to cut out télécoms wherever possible.
Indeed, Free.fr let’s their mobile customers connect to any of their fixed-network subscriber’s wifi with appropriate segmentation.
Educational users can connect to eduroam at any participating institution.
I think Fon tried to go down this road, but no go.
Or the cars are stolen for use in some other crime and then abandoned, sometimes even before the owner knows about it.
Is there really still a massive stolen car problem?
[1] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
But yes, it’s nowhere as bad as it was in the ‘80s/‘90s. This has to do with social changes (the drop in heroin use and crime, and general improvement in living standards) as much as with technological ones (alarms installed by default, electronic locks on injection).
How would the car know when it has been stolen?
Any kind of generalization like that for all of Europe is bound to be wrong
Assume all cars are created and stolen equal that's not really a massive problem in my world.
You can't beat a determined opposition casually.
As far as 120/240 thing, if you have a component not meant for that kind of voltage, it might fail open, or it might fail short.
If it fails short, high amounts of current might be allowed to flow through other components which would carbonize so even more current would flow. And maybe catch fire.
Man, I love the internet.