8 ms·

The Curious Case of the Disappearing Nuts (2017)

38 points by acdanger 7y ago

blantonl 7y ago
It seems like there is a lot of opportunity for technology, in this case GPS Asset tracking, to be of real use here. These are really crimes of opportunity, and time is of the essence for criminals in these cases. Sweeping a load for GPS trackers that are now so inexpensive and small seems to be prohibitive and could easily start to help to diagram out the networks that are part of these thefts.
- jandrese 7y ago
  The article briefly touched on this. One company attached GPS trackers to its packages, but they were stolen anyway and the thieves were not tracked. It didn't explain why, but if I had to guess an outfit as sophisticated as this is probably smart enough to plop a GPS jammer in their trucks when moving around the hot nuts.
  - criddell 7y ago
    Is jamming GPS necessary? Wouldn't it be easier to jam the cellular signal that they use to report the GPS coordinates back to the owners?
    - jandrese 7y ago
      GPS jamming is ridiculously easy. You can buy $50 devices off Alibaba that fit in your pocket and only require you to flip on a switch. Jamming cell signals is much harder because there are so many different bands and the transmitters are much more powerful. It requires bulky expensive hardware and some expertise to do it properly. Plus you are more likely to be noticed if your vehicle is a rolling cell deadzone. I listened to a talk a couple of years ago from a company that specializes in detecting GPS spoofers and one of the side effects was that they were able to watch people cheating their rental mileage agreements on box trucks via GPS jamming as they drove around London. The jammers would trip their sensors one after another as they drove down the road. There were hundreds of them operating in the city during the day.
      - justausername4 7y ago
        I work for one of the organizations cited in the article and worked on this investigation. There were several arrests in 2016 and things have mostly been back to normal. You're right about jamming. I'm aware of several thefts in which covert cargo tracking or driver cell phone tracking was employed. At the end of the day they jam the signal, search the trailer, and discard the device or in the case of driver tracking..just turn it off. Tracking isn't the way. There is very little the shippers can do to prevent it as well. It's up to the shipment broker to vet and identify identity theft of the trucking carrier when the load is being booked. Very few of them have any sort of security practices. The industry is woefully susceptible to even basic social engineering attacks.
  - johnr2 7y ago
    > probably smart enough to plop a GPS jammer in their trucks when moving around the hot nuts. Or they transported them in a Faraday cage, eg. a metal truck trailer.
OrangeMango 7y ago
> Ultimately, Parker’s bigger contribution to stopping nut theft had little to do with police work: in the wake of the Crain theft, he began training Tehama County nut processors in basic security precautions, and there have been no fictitious pickups there since 2013, despite increased problems elsewhere in the state. The big takeaway. Make yourself a little harder to steal from, and nobody will bother, because everyone else is still terrible.
- MisterTea 7y ago
  Indeed. Another tidbit is this: Inventing a fake trucking company is easy, he said, as is impersonating a legitimate one. The only people in the shipping industry responsible for verifying truckers are brokers, who connect customers with trucking companies. Wadhwani looked into vetting practices at a major brokerage several years ago and asked the company to describe its process. An employee said, “We ask the trucking company to send documents, we pick them up off the fax, and we file them away. We don’t look at them, we don’t read them.” So it seems the industry is very lackadaisical as a whole in terms of security practices. Vetting people costs money.
Accujack 7y ago
Russian organized crime wants to own the world the same way they do Russia. Trump is helping them out.
tomohawk 7y ago
> in California, a 2014 state law prohibits people convicted of grand theft from serving sentences in state prison Seems to be working!
- dang 7y ago
  You've been using HN primarily for ideological battle. That's not allowed here—see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20primarily%20test&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu.... We ban accounts that do it, because it's destructive of the value of this site, intellectual curiosity. We've had to ask you not to do this before. I don't want to ban you, but we need you to fix this, so please fix it and use HN as intended.
ncmncm 7y ago
Bofa.

38 points by acdanger 7y ago

It seems like there is a lot of opportunity for technology, in this case GPS Asset tracking, to be of real use here. These are really crimes of opportunity, and time is of the essence for criminals in these cases. Sweeping a load for GPS trackers that are now so inexpensive and small seems to be prohibitive and could easily start to help to diagram out the networks that are part of these thefts.

jandrese 7y ago
The article briefly touched on this. One company attached GPS trackers to its packages, but they were stolen anyway and the thieves were not tracked. It didn't explain why, but if I had to guess an outfit as sophisticated as this is probably smart enough to plop a GPS jammer in their trucks when moving around the hot nuts.
- criddell 7y ago
  Is jamming GPS necessary? Wouldn't it be easier to jam the cellular signal that they use to report the GPS coordinates back to the owners?
  - jandrese 7y ago
    GPS jamming is ridiculously easy. You can buy $50 devices off Alibaba that fit in your pocket and only require you to flip on a switch. Jamming cell signals is much harder because there are so many different bands and the transmitters are much more powerful. It requires bulky expensive hardware and some expertise to do it properly. Plus you are more likely to be noticed if your vehicle is a rolling cell deadzone. I listened to a talk a couple of years ago from a company that specializes in detecting GPS spoofers and one of the side effects was that they were able to watch people cheating their rental mileage agreements on box trucks via GPS jamming as they drove around London. The jammers would trip their sensors one after another as they drove down the road. There were hundreds of them operating in the city during the day.
    - justausername4 7y ago
      I work for one of the organizations cited in the article and worked on this investigation. There were several arrests in 2016 and things have mostly been back to normal. You're right about jamming. I'm aware of several thefts in which covert cargo tracking or driver cell phone tracking was employed. At the end of the day they jam the signal, search the trailer, and discard the device or in the case of driver tracking..just turn it off. Tracking isn't the way. There is very little the shippers can do to prevent it as well. It's up to the shipment broker to vet and identify identity theft of the trucking carrier when the load is being booked. Very few of them have any sort of security practices. The industry is woefully susceptible to even basic social engineering attacks.
- johnr2 7y ago
  > probably smart enough to plop a GPS jammer in their trucks when moving around the hot nuts. Or they transported them in a Faraday cage, eg. a metal truck trailer.

OrangeMango 7y ago

> Ultimately, Parker’s bigger contribution to stopping nut theft had little to do with police work: in the wake of the Crain theft, he began training Tehama County nut processors in basic security precautions, and there have been no fictitious pickups there since 2013, despite increased problems elsewhere in the state. The big takeaway. Make yourself a little harder to steal from, and nobody will bother, because everyone else is still terrible.

MisterTea 7y ago
Indeed. Another tidbit is this: Inventing a fake trucking company is easy, he said, as is impersonating a legitimate one. The only people in the shipping industry responsible for verifying truckers are brokers, who connect customers with trucking companies. Wadhwani looked into vetting practices at a major brokerage several years ago and asked the company to describe its process. An employee said, “We ask the trucking company to send documents, we pick them up off the fax, and we file them away. We don’t look at them, we don’t read them.” So it seems the industry is very lackadaisical as a whole in terms of security practices. Vetting people costs money.

Accujack 7y ago

Russian organized crime wants to own the world the same way they do Russia. Trump is helping them out.

tomohawk 7y ago

> in California, a 2014 state law prohibits people convicted of grand theft from serving sentences in state prison Seems to be working!

dang 7y ago
You've been using HN primarily for ideological battle. That's not allowed here—see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20primarily%20test&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu.... We ban accounts that do it, because it's destructive of the value of this site, intellectual curiosity. We've had to ask you not to do this before. I don't want to ban you, but we need you to fix this, so please fix it and use HN as intended.

ncmncm 7y ago

Bofa.