If you haven’t been freaked out by internet security up till now, you will be after you read this.
One computer geek has just demonstrated at the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas how easy it is to pinpoint someone’s exact physical location to within a few metres, and that is without relying on obtaining the IP. What’s worse is any computer geek with an agenda could do it if they really wanted to.
Hacker and internet security researcher Samy Kamkar, gave a talk titled “How I Met Your Girlfriend” to show exactly how it could be done.
First of all he tricked the user he wanted to locate the whereabouts of, into visiting a booby trapped website he had already set up, and once they clicked on that link, Kamkar demonstrated how he can use Google’s tools to reveal the exact location of that user.
All you need to do to be vulnerable to this kind of attack is to use a router to go online, as many of us do at home on a regular basis.
Kamkar exploited certain weaknesses in routers by finding a way to obtain the Mac address using a remote malicious JavaScript Code to determine the type of wireless router used.
Once he had the Mac address, Kamkar then showed how it was possible to use a geo-location feature to interrogate a Google database that was created when Google was collecting data for its Street View feature as it links Mac addresses with location. And it really was as simple as that.
During the presentation, Kamkar revealed the location of actress Anna Faris to within 30 metres. Now that is scary.
“This is geo-location gone terrible” Mr Kamkar said whilst demonstrating what could be done.
Kamkar hit the headlines a couple of years ago so you might remember him. He was the guy who launched a worm on MySpace and got himself 1 million friends in 1 single day. For that he got 90 days of community service and 3 years probation.
He’s now in the limelight again, this time for revealing how technology comes with a price and the cost is privacy.
The thought that someone, somewhere, perhaps with malicious intent, can pinpoint exactly where you live without much effort, is really quite terrifying. I mean a bunch of Facebook profiles launched on the web is nothing in comparison to this.
In Kamkar’s own words, “Privacy is dead people. I’m sorry”.
