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What's the motivation for the bogus data? Just adding noise to obscure real vessel activity? Similarly, the entire AIS tracking system needs a layer of authent

by brk 2y ago

What's the motivation for the bogus data? Just adding noise to obscure real vessel activity? Similarly, the entire AIS tracking system needs a layer of authentication. I ran an AIS station for several years that fed data to Marinetraffic, and I could have stuffed whatever data I wanted into their database with no apparent restrictions or checks.

mschuster91 2y ago
> What's the motivation for the bogus data? Some people just want to see the world burn. Vandals and trolls basically. IIRC there have been multiple incidents of people spoofing genitalia shaped tracks (on top of an even larger multitude of actual pilots steering air and water craft to draw genitalia). Easy enough to do, all you need is a transmitter (which are getting very cheap these days thankfully) and something that can output a stream of fake GPS positions in NMEA format on a serial port. Others run broken or misconfigured equipment and either don't know, don't care or do it intentionally with plausible deniability (Chinese ships in non-China waters stealing fish are a huge problem [1]). At least a lot of the dumbasses and breakages can actually be filtered - AIS Class A transmitters on large ships can reach up to 100km, AIS Class B transmitters (everyone else) about 40km, ADS-B on aircraft about 500km. That means even as a solo operator of an AIS/ADS receiver, you can safely discard anything more than these distances away from your coordinates, it's likely garbage, just like stuff that moves at impossible speeds - you won't get a boat at more than 100 km/h, a small prop aircraft like a Cessna at more than 500 km/h (unless it's nose-dive crashing), or a civilian airliner at more than 1.200 km/h. [1] https://www.seaaroundus.org/industrial-fleets-operating-indian-ocean-turn-off-monitoring-systems-fail-reporting-obligations/ https://www.seaaroundus.org/industrial-fleets-operating-indi...
mcculley 2y ago
Some do not want their competitors to know where they are. Some vessels are fishing in illegal waters or violating sanctions.

by brk 2y ago

mschuster91 2y ago

> What's the motivation for the bogus data? Some people just want to see the world burn. Vandals and trolls basically. IIRC there have been multiple incidents of people spoofing genitalia shaped tracks (on top of an even larger multitude of actual pilots steering air and water craft to draw genitalia). Easy enough to do, all you need is a transmitter (which are getting very cheap these days thankfully) and something that can output a stream of fake GPS positions in NMEA format on a serial port. Others run broken or misconfigured equipment and either don't know, don't care or do it intentionally with plausible deniability (Chinese ships in non-China waters stealing fish are a huge problem [1]). At least a lot of the dumbasses and breakages can actually be filtered - AIS Class A transmitters on large ships can reach up to 100km, AIS Class B transmitters (everyone else) about 40km, ADS-B on aircraft about 500km. That means even as a solo operator of an AIS/ADS receiver, you can safely discard anything more than these distances away from your coordinates, it's likely garbage, just like stuff that moves at impossible speeds - you won't get a boat at more than 100 km/h, a small prop aircraft like a Cessna at more than 500 km/h (unless it's nose-dive crashing), or a civilian airliner at more than 1.200 km/h. [1] https://www.seaaroundus.org/industrial-fleets-operating-indian-ocean-turn-off-monitoring-systems-fail-reporting-obligations/ https://www.seaaroundus.org/industrial-fleets-operating-indi...

mcculley 2y ago

Some do not want their competitors to know where they are. Some vessels are fishing in illegal waters or violating sanctions.