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There are pirates (thieves, but I like Pirate better?) whom were renting luxury boats in the Mediterranean, and stealing them. They would fly to Europe, and dr
by hellbannedguy 6y ago
There are pirates (thieves, but I like Pirate better?) whom were renting luxury boats in the Mediterranean, and stealing them.
They would fly to Europe, and dress like rich fancy boys.
They would then rent the ships for vacation.
They would take the transponder off the luxury vessel, and put it on a toy boat. The owner would check on his vessel, and it all looked fine.
Meanwhile, the thieves would have the boat in Russia in a few days.
(I believe they got 100 boats. This article reminded me of the caper.)
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- antihero 6y agoNot going to lie but this sounds far more entertaining than sitting at my dining room all day making computer programs.
- kinduff 6y agoI lol'd. Sometimes when I read these kind of stories, including phishing and hacking ones, there's this tiny inner evil in me that wants to do bad things, but then I remember consequences and that being good usually pays off.
- 1-more 6y agoSome very sketchy back of a napkin in my head math says that my fake email job[1] amounts to pulling off multiple boat heists every year without the intervention of the authorities (whether legitimate or—more problematic—illegitimate). I'm getting away with a lot here. [1] https://twitter.com/Eve6/status/1341031553078448131?s=20 https://twitter.com/Eve6/status/1341031553078448131?s=20
- nabeards 6y agoThe Imp of the Perverse, of course.
- temp8964 6y agoIn a broader sense, they can be considered as hackers.
- kubanczyk 6y agoMaking business harder for tourists and renting places is neither cool nor "hacking".
- ryandrake 6y agoIt just means maybe there is a market for boat rental pen-testing and security consultancies. There are probably lots of similar vulns in the rental business's process, which can be demonstrated by white hats and corrected. In this case, it was the business incorrectly trusting the thieves' story and foolishly delivering a product they had no way to repossess.
- temp8964 6y agoWhat? Don't some computer hackers also make business harder for regular users? Maybe you have a very different definition of hacker.
- GordonS 6y agoHmm, this seems almost like the perfect crime - easy to pull off, and difficult to get caught. I wonder what protections can be made against this? Tamper-proofing the transponders might go some way, but a bullet-proof solution likely isn't possible.
- jimmyed 6y agoThis is in large part due to the attacker having physical access of the asset. This complicates the security. Something like, how do you ensure the user is not running a modded app to send requests to the backend?
- carstenhag 6y agoDeposits, ID checks, regular checks, mandatory security guards?
- GordonS 6y agoDeposits: would have to be a helluva deposit vs what you'd get for selling the boat ID checks: presumably they must already do that - I mean, they check your ID for hiring a car/van. I wonder if the criminals used stolen ID to get around this? Regular checks: on what? Security guards: you mean when you hire a boat, a security guard comes along for the ride? I can't see many genuine clients being happy about that
- dogma1138 6y agoHow do they sail into Russia? They would need their own AIS transponder and a valid ship registration, the Greek/Turkish maritime zone and the Black Sea has a tone of coast guard and military activity and you need to Lee-register/declare traversal. Going into Russia through the northern sea doesn’t seem to be viable either.
- secondcoming 6y agoI would assume that all bets are off once they reach international waters?
- dogma1138 6y agoTo get through to Russia they need to pass territorial waters, you ain’t getting into the Black Sea or through the Aegean really with your AIS turned off. Now it’s even harder due to the migrant crisis the waters are very heavily patrolled and anything bigger than a dingy will light up on radar.
- dotancohen 6y agoThe Russian coast of the Black Sea can only be accessed by passing through Turkish waters. And the other Russian coasts are relatively far away, challenging, and dangerous to sail to in a pleasure yacht.
- edge17 6y agoOr they could just turn off AIS broadcasts?
- dogma1138 6y agoTry doing that in the Aegean not to mention the Sea of Marmara / Dardanelles and lets see how that works out. They might be able to sail into North Africa and then arrange for fake papers and ownership transfer but I would really like to know how they would sail into Russia without raising any alarms.
- rogerdickey 6y agowhat did they do with the crews? most very high end yachts come with a dedicated crew