Attackers can surveil and disrupt vehicles that use popular GPS trackers

A lot of people use GPS to get around, because they don’t know the area, they want the fastest route, they might know the area but it assists getting them around traffic problem spots, or any other reason they feel they need to use it.

That’s all well and good, and I support GPS use, but this article makes me wonder what can be done about it.

According to the Cyberscoop article titled Attackers can surveil, disrupt vehicles outfitted with popular GPS tracker, CISA warns we have something to worry about.

The opening paragraph should scare people who drive alone, but there’s plenty more. That paragraph says:

Six vulnerabilities in a popular GPS tracking device could allow malicious hackers to secretly track, disrupt or even remotely shut off vehicles, federal cybersecurity officials warned Tuesday.

I would assume that they need to be in close proximity to the vehicle they chose, correct? They couldn’t just do this in Las Vegas to a California car or equiped vehicle correct?

The Chinese-made tracker in question is known as the MiCODUS MV720 GPS tracker. It’s used across the globe by consumers and businesses alike seeking theft protection and location management, according to the cybersecurity company BitSight, which discovered the problem earlier this year and notified CISA. BitSight and CISA collaborated on the vulnerability alert.

BTW, it says in the article that it is a Chinese made device, but all drivers should be aware of what is going on regardless of the model of device they use.

There are links and other things that might be of interest, but this will be our topic for next week. If you’ve read the article and you want to submit comments, you may. We can read from the blog, you can email/imessage/text/call and we’l make it work.

If you leave a comment wanting to be aired, make that known. I won’t use it without permission.