
Poachers Hack Environmentalists’ GPS Signals to Hunt Endangered Animals - GuardianCaveman
https://heatst.com/life/tech-savvy-poachers-hack-gps-signals-to-hunt-endangered-animals/
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droithomme
The article claims the most well known incident is when eight grey wolves
introduced to Yellowstone were tracked down and shot through of their GPS
transmitters:

> "Cooke said the worst known case of GPS interception by poachers was when
> eight grey wolves in Yellowstone national park were hunted down."

This claim of the use of GPS trackers to hunt wolves in Yellowstone, stated as
the worst known case, appears to be fabricated.

The research journal article does not make the same claim cited in the linked
article. (Which fails to link to or cite the article it is sourcing; it is
"Troubling Issues at the Frontier of Animal Tracking" for those interested.)
The journal article mentions instead "speculation in the media suggests that
hunters may target tagged wolves from Yellowstone to interfere with
research.... websites operated by some wolf-persecution groups provide
strategies for figuring out tag codes." Speculation, not evidence or proof.

Efforts to reintroduce wolves into the Yellowstone area have been ongoing for
decades and have been so successful that there are now legally sanctioned wolf
hunts in order to help control the population. Of the wolves killed in the
vicinity, some have had VHF radio collars which can be picked up in the near
vicinity with radio trackers, and one, 832F, had a more modern GPS collar. Of
the 11 wolves that were being tracked with either radio or GPS collars in
Yellowstone, 4 were shot by hunters, all legally, in permitted hunts. This is
not poaching. Poaching is illegal. Nor is there proof that any of these legal
hunters used the collars to find the wolves. Suggestions they did so far have
just been wild speculation by media, wolf enthusiasts, and journal authors who
refer to legal hunters as "wolf-persecution groups", a tell of their viewpoint
bias.

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dforrestwilson1
This kind of reply is what I love about HN. So many stories come out biased or
simply factually inaccurate. I wish newspapers like the NYT and WSJ had a
prominent chat feature to promote fact-checking.

~~~
Raphmedia
> I wish newspapers like the NYT and WSJ had a prominent chat feature to
> promote fact-checking.

We both know what really happens when news website get comment sections and
chats. Toxic communities appears out of thin air.

~~~
kbenson
Every once in a while I'll check the comments on a politico story just to see
if there's anything interesting someone has added. Hasn't been anything yet.
It's name-calling from the get-go.

~~~
Raphmedia
I often wonder how much of that is triggered by paid employees. Be it the
competition or state actors.

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gtirloni
Seems like a good opportunity to deploy some honeypots.

~~~
AnsemWise
Exactly what I was thinking.

Side note, anyone available to go on a poacher hunt?

~~~
gigatexal
I'm game. Let's go protect the wildlife. Though the best course of action
would be finding ways to temper demand for poached animals. Easier said than
done I know.

~~~
emiliobumachar
How about legalizing fraud in these narrow contexts, e.g., passing off fake
ivory for the real thing is no longer illegal?

~~~
problems
I doubt you'd get busted for passing off fake ivory even without such a
change, probably not many people want to out themselves as an ivory buyer to
authorities and media.

~~~
gigatexal
Education might also help rhinos from losing their tusks. Too many believe
that the tusks help verility of all things. Without sounding ethnocentric
these cultural beliefs are harmful and incongruent or unbecoming of an
educated society

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lukejduncan
The first time I heard of HeatStreet was as a claimed source by the Trump
administration that Obama had wiretapped him. Is HeatStreet a credible source?
Given its association with Breitbart in the wiretapping allegations and others
comments that parts of the story are fabricated I have to wonder.

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tmzt
Does anybody know if the devices are spread-spectrum radios, or are they
trackable with a simple HT or scanner?

Encrypting the data would do very little if basic direction finding was
sufficient.

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rdiddly
So with a satellite-based system, the signals only go straight to the
satellite huh? They don't radiate out in all directions like all other EM
radiation?

~~~
monochromatic
Yeah, that is odd. I assume what they're getting at is that this is encrypted
packet data, instead of whatever the RF system used.

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rootsudo
Radio freq's aren't private.

FCC licensing.

Anyone w/ a Radio scanner or RTSDR can just camp out in the woods and identify
the old fashioned way.

GPS signals don't work that way.

~~~
moftz
If the beacon data happened to be encrypted, then breaking that encryption
might be a violation of the law. Although you could just use directional
finding to locate the source of the beacon. That's assuming these animal
collars transmit data at some interval without any input. A more secure system
would be to have a call and response system using a secret key. Each collar
would have a unique ID number, a unique private key, and a GPS receiver. The
tracker system would contain a list of collar public keys and a GPS receiver
as well. To find any specific collar, the tracker would use the public key to
encrypt the ID number and a time stamp from the GPS data. Any collars in the
vicinity would see the transmission, try to decrypt it, then compare the ID
number with their own. If it's junk data, ignore the transmission. If the ID
matches, the time stamp is compared with the collar's own GPS data to check if
was anytime within the last few seconds (or however long it takes to lock onto
a GPS signal). The collar would then reply with the ID number and GPS location
data encrypted using the tracker's public key. The tracker receives the data,
decrypts it, and displays the location on a map. Thus, the time stamping would
prevent any replay attacks by only allowing the collars to respond when the
real tracker is requesting its location. Controlling how often a collar is
allowed to respond would prevent a replay attacker from getting any responses
once the collar receives a legit request from the tracker. The only way to
really attack this system would be to setup a directional finding system to
pinpoint the location of the collar but this would only work during the times
the tracker happens to be looking for an animal you are trying to poach.
Another option is to steal the tracker device and beat a park ranger until
they give up the password to it.

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jrowley
Paging EFF? Civil liberties for endangered animals maybe /s

