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The article has no citations to back it the claims. It states "researchers also believe that this malware is being used by an organized crime ring either to pr
by jrd259 7y ago
The article has no citations to back it the claims. It states "researchers also believe that this malware is being used by an organized crime ring either to prepare for an enormous future attack on targeted users, or to sell collected information on the dark web" with no attribution. Nor is it obvious how battery condition or orientation would be any use to attackers or purchasers.
- floatingatoll 7y agoSeems like it could be reproduced easily by a typical HN reader. “Fetch a site a thousand times and check the served JavaScript for weirdness” isn’t exactly a high bar. Defining weirdness is the secret sauce for sure, though! Battery condition and orientation are useful for fingerprinting devices, alongside the more commonly-known canvas attacks. Your battery status may be used to track you online, 98 comments (2016) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12208880 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12208880
- jlv2 7y agoYour battery status and orientation aren't going to be useful for tracking you in a "future attack on targeted users", since by then both would have completely changed.
- floatingatoll 7y agoIf the purpose is to identify you as a visitor to the site, then once they have identified you, that goal has been met. You're assuming that they must, in the future, again identify you: that is not at all necessary for e.g. spear phishing, blackmail, or other attacks.
- ta999999171 7y agoCombine it with 300 other metrics slurped up by similarly "innocuous" software, and, presto - ad-network!
- jlv2 7y agoThis whole article is bunk. How do they get this conclusion? "So anyone who has visited weather.com from a mobile device in the past few months is now vulnerable to future malicious activity down the road."