Thieves in South Africa Hit Traffic Lights For SIM Cards 181
arisvega writes "Some 400 high-tech South African traffic lights are out of action after thieves in Johannesburg stole the mobile phone SIM cards they contain. JRA (Johannesburg Road Agency) said it is investigating the possibility of an 'inside job' after only the SIM card-fitted traffic lights were targeted. The cards were fitted to notify JRA when the traffic lights were faulty. 'We have 2,000 major intersections in Johannesburg and only 600 of those were fitted with the cards,' the agency's spokesperson Thulani Makhubela told the BBC. 'No-one apart from JRA and our supplier knows which intersections have that system.' The thieves ran up bills amounting to thousands of dollars by using the stolen cards to make calls."
STO, really, again? (Score:2)
'No-one apart from JRA and our supplier knows which intersections have that system.'
That's their defense regarding how they managed this not to happen? Security through obscurity? Really? Does people never learn?
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Re:STO, really, again? (Score:4, Interesting)
That often doesn't matter in South Africa.
Lots of traffic lights (called "robots" over there) are often times out of commission, because people are stealing power cables for copper that they contain. If they go to trouble of getting into powered cables under ground do you really think a small thing like a lock is going to matter?
Re:STO, really, again? (Score:5, Insightful)
No that's the rational for suspecting an inside job and hence investigating that angle.
You would think it would be a no-brainer to have the SIM cards on some sort of custom phone plan which only allows calls to a fixed set of numbers, though.
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You would think it would be a no-brainer to have the SIM cards on some sort of custom phone plan which only allows calls to a fixed set of numbers, though.
My thoughts when hearing this story on the radio the other day:
"You can produce modified traffic lights that can do all this cool stuff, but then you can't lock the sim cards to that particular bit of proprietary hardware? Whiiiiiffffffff"
But the "change the calling plan" idea could be done quickly after the fact and save the rest of their installed bas
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Stealing sim cards is a no-brainer.
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You'd think these high tech intersections would have cameras for red light and speeding violations. Next time they might want to allocate some of the budget to CCTV as well. :)
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It should be possible to triangulate where a phone is with a stolen simcard. If several cells don't overlap the phone at least you know the neighborhood.
Stealing sim cards is a no-brainer.
Triangulation isn't as easy as it sounds. First, to be accurate you'll need a minimum of three towers in range, and in real life application you probably will need closer to 5 or 6 to get a real-time fix on a location.
On paper triangulation is simple; draw three circles with radius equal to the signal strenght, and your intersection point is the origin. But this is an ideal case. In real life signal strength will vary quite a bit just by moving around or changing the direction of the antenna. So for each of
Re:STO, really, again? (Score:4, Funny)
They don't have physics in south africa?
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They did, but a gang of thieves stole it.
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So, just *where* did you buy this SIM card?
At the very least, I'd expect people to become a lot more careful about where they buy their SIM cards if this story receives enough publicity.
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But the "change the calling plan" idea could be done quickly after the fact and save the rest of their installed base, that's even easier.
Even if the installers did not record which SIM goes with which IMEI the network will have this information.
Re:STO, really, again? (Score:5, Insightful)
It isn't like there is a tiny little man in the control box who has to call when he is out of sandwiches or anything...
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Exactly my thought.
Some tablets and ebook readers (ie: Nook) include SIM cards to provide data access, but those are specifically set to allow data connections only and nothing else. I find it odd that they couldn't do the same for traffic lights, unless such features don't exist in South African cell networks which are in all likelihood more advanced than the cell networks here . . .
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Of course they need voice.
When a pedestrian presses the button at the crossing, it's so they can hear "C'mon, little man, change to green"!
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Presumably that was why the crooks initially only took a few. Then came back when they had checked that they could use the SIMs. Having each SIM tied to the IMEI of the modem would also have been a good idea.
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Except most operators don't support a positive list - and most won't even support a negative list. Also, even *IF* they had such an option, the thieves would just have to switch the cards to roaming (this however can be disabled, but aren't on most cards, and since they where so easily picked up, I doubt they where anything but run of the mill standard setup).
There is almost no business case for an operator to do anything for those SIM card enabled traffic lights. Yeah they might make a bit on a subscriptio
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It's a government customer. They want a *really* low volume usage pattern. Technically it should be trivial - if your technically inept then surely you have a prepaid service put the sims on that and set it to autopay $5 (or whatever) each month.
Roaming shouldn't matter. Or are you claiming I can take my $10 prepaid cell phone sim and just switch to roaming and rack up $10,000 in phone calls?
Of course I know very little of cell phone tech. I do know that I can buy SMS only plans and really cheap plans with
Re:STO, really, again? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes. And it works most of the time.
Security in the world of road side traffic systems is almost none existent. It's simply not a priority. You cannot pull of a "all green chaos attack" as in "the italian job" (safety systems protect unsafe situations), but you can cause major gridlock with ease if you know what you are doing.
We fit a lot of our systems with wireless GSM, it's pretty cheap but not that reliable. However, we arrange it so you cannot use those sims for calling, only GPRS/UMTS/3G connections to a private network.
(I could tell a thing or 2 about the speed camera's we produce, but that would break my NDA I guess)
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Forgot to add, I'm an engineer at a traffic light manufacturer.
Re:STO, really, again? (Score:4, Informative)
Why are you asking a traffic light manufacturer dude? No doubt he does know a thing or two about traffic in general, but you'd really want to talk to a (city) traffic engineer. These are the people who actually work out the signaling for given areas taking into account other areas, major highways, the time of day, behavior during rush hour, etc.
These do exist - but often a pre-programmed format works out better. Take for example an intersection of a busy through road and a residential road. On the residential road is you and your wife who just got married and you've got 20 other cars trailing you. The 'smart' signaling system sees the 10 cars and decides to give you more time at the intersection.. instead of letting ~8 cars pass, it's going to let you and the other 20 cars through. But now you've halted traffic on the through road for so long that the traffic light a block further back is already green again and cars are backing up into that intersection.
These also exist. There's tons of those where I live - there's just an induction loop in the road some hundred yards or so from the traffic lights. Now you might say "well 100 yards isn't enough if I'm cruising along at 35mph" - but keep in mind that just as -you- would like to see the traffic light magically change to green when it should 'know' the intersection is clear, there might be somebody in another car from a side direction thinking the exact same thing. So when you think the traffic signal is 'smart' and will give you a green by the time you hit the intersection, so will that person. That's a Bad Thing. That's why the loops are closer to the intersection here.. to make even drivers who are familiar with these intersections and 'know' they will get a green slow down enough to get a good overview of the intersection and be able to stop well in time just in case they do -not- get that green because somebody else did.
It's 2011 and we need smarter drivers more than we need smarter traffic lights :)
That said, there's certainly intersections that are on a completely fixed interval, going through 4 or even 7 directions in a cycle, and in the middle of the night you just have to wait and wait and wait wondering just who the heck the other directions' traffic lights are on green for. Just know that this is not for a lack of technology and capability - it's typically for a lack of the municipality/state/whoever wanting to pay.
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You assume that trafficlights are to speed up the flow of traffic. This is common misunderstanding, 90% of the time the traffic flows better unregulated. This is a known fact.
Trafficlights are placed for safety, because as soon as you do have an incident on an intersection then traffic grinds to a halt very fast. Not to forget the cost of human life and all.
And then you have the busy road with a very low density turn, traffic coming from that turn has no chance to get on the busy road safely without traffic
Re:STO, really, again? (Score:4, Funny)
In that case. Thanks for your money. And don't forget to keep wearing your tinfoil hat.
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We have, in my small town, one (1) intersection which works exactly as you describe. The default state of the light is green for the main drag, but if you approach on a side street at a reasonable speed the light will turn green before you get to the intersection (as long as there's no other traffic). These side-streets aren't ever particularly busy, so the light then (quite reasonably) goes back to default a few seconds after you've cleared it.
It uses cameras to detect traffic using some computer-vision
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No more invasive than an inductive loop in the pavement. The cameras, and the computers behind them, simply see what cars are up to and adjust the traffic lights to suit (with various levels of success).
The function, in the instance I mentioned, is that vehicles are allowed through an intersection without stopping, as long as traffic permits. I think I spelled this out fairly clearly.
Meanwhile, the City of which I speak does not have the infrastructure (either wired, or wireless) to backhaul video to a ce
Intersection sensors and motorcycles (Score:3)
Anybody know how to make those things trip if you're on a motorcycle?
Other alternatives (if you're waiting to make a left):
1. Waiting forever.
2. Make a right turn, a u-turn up the road, another right turn, a u-turn, and another right turn.
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3. Just go anyways
4. When approaching the left turn lane, keep your speed at at least 10 mph while you go over the second to final "box" in the pavement (yes, the one that is about 10 - 15 feet from the intersection). This increases the amount of induction your bike produces, making it more visible to the sensor. If you slowly coast up to the light it is unlikely to detect you. Obviously you can't be a beginner rider to try this and always account for conditions and the possibility of loose gravel that migh
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Thanks for the tips.
I was under the mistaken impression that it might have been some kind of weight sensor, so I'd be looking for the "perfect" place to rest the motorcycle to trip it.
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That's great! Seems obvious in retrospect ...
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It is certainly possible to make them trip for motorcycles, the ones around here trip for regular bicycles.
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If you can see the loops in the road, then put you motor bike on the edges, it's more sensitive on the edges then on the center. Also, heaver bikes help, and complaining at the local authorities, because 90% of the time it's just a sensitivity setting that needs to be tweaked a bit.
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They've been around for ages. Not always very good at detecting cyclists (I've once or twice had to jump red lights at night after waiting more than 5 minutes for them to change), and they still can't eliminate traffic entirely when there's contention. I mean, come on: you can get traffic on a straight road with no traffic lights if people want to turn into side roads or someone's a bit heavy on the brake.
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Not always very good at detecting cyclists (I've once or twice had to jump red lights at night after waiting more than 5 minutes for them to change)
They have this at a junction near me, and quite often it can't detect *cars* never mind cyclists.
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Why can't an intersection be aware enough to see you approach the empty intersection and smart enough to give you a green light before you arrive?
They don't do that already for you?
The only serious problem with this is that it doesn't work in rush hour, where it is much better to have a coordinated plan for all traffic lights than to have each light do its own thing.
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You cannot pull of a "all green chaos attack" as in "the italian job" (safety systems protect unsafe situations), but you can cause major gridlock with ease if you know what you are doing.
Surely it's "just" a matter of bypassing the electronics all together and keep the green light lit by powering it directly? Perhaps controlled by your own electronics to be able to have some control over the behavior. You'd need physical access, of course..
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You also need physical access to steal a SIM card. So the thieves had that.
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A crowbar gives physical access to almost anything ;-)
But more likely they had a master key. Which makes the inside job more likely.
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In "the italian job" they didn't use physical access. They remotely set all the lights to green, while all green is impossible, all red is a feature! Where I live most lights in a single city are on 1 network, just get physical access to 1 light and you pwn them all so to say.
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Are there physical interlocks in your engineered traffic light systems like the physical drums from days gone by? Those older analog drum systems would physically prevent an all-green situation. If your system has everything in firmware, and isn't protected by some physical relay system or interlock, the proper attacker could inflict an all-green situation.
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I dunno. I saw the same episode of Macguyver and I'm not convinced of your assertion.
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Perhaps they could have avoided using tech useful to consumers, but there are idiots and people on drugs around that will steal just about anything, even if their gain ends up being tiny compared to the damage done. Some people rip things up just looking for scrap copper. In the U.S. I recall reports of a childrens' baseball area with no lighting because the copper was taken, apartment building where the clothes washers were taken just for the coin boxes.
In this story, I suspect even knowledge of the SIM
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Thieves aren't generally very smart.
Generally this type of theft is just for the scrap value of the metal - The $1 - 2 they might get for the steel pizza-dish, pole and other hardware.
Why have GSM cell? fiber / wifi / microwave / e-ne (Score:2)
Why have GSM cell? fiber / wifi / microwave / e-net are cheaper when you look at the high cost of GSM data?
In use most lights use wired base cables for data passing to other lights / the data center.
Re:Why have GSM cell? fiber / wifi / microwave / e (Score:5, Interesting)
The cost of GSM data isn't very high when all you're sending is "help I'm not working correctly". Since the link serves no other purpose, four bytes should be enough to send a basic diagnostic code.
SIM cards cost about ten cents, basic GSM hardware maybe a few dollars, and I think it's safe to assume all the poles are on a shared data plan.
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The cost of GSM data isn't very high when all you're sending is "help I'm not working correctly". Since the link serves no other purpose, four bytes should be enough to send a basic diagnostic code.
The system I worked on also transmitted data about traffic density and the timing of the signal controller. Each controller negotiates with adjacent intersections to agree on timing so that delays at red lights are minimised. Also traffic engineers can log in to tune the system. Traffic volume data is also transmitted through the link. In that system we used 300 baud modems on hard wired land lines. The system polled so maybe every two seconds you would see 64 bytes going in each direction. Thats about four
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If companies in my place are offering mobile internet (no calls, just an USB GSM modem to plug in your computer) for 12$/mth to consumers with a 5g cap; then I assume that a mass purchase for an expected use of 200mb/month would get a price of 5$/month/light. So, including the data costs and GSM hardware, the mobile connection cost is approximately equivalent to digging a ditch for the first ten feet of cable...
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With 160 bytes being able to send some quite extensive diagnostics.
One cheap way to do things would be to use prepaid SIMS which will at most have enough credit to send 5-10 texts.
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Why have GSM cell? fiber / wifi / microwave / e-net are cheaper when you look at the high cost of GSM data?
In use most lights use wired base cables for data passing to other lights / the data center.
Because outside of North America, the GSM system is significantly more robust than the alternatives, and allows you to lock down the communications. Of course, the fact that these SIMs were not locked down smacks of either incompetence or that the people setting up the system were in on the heist.
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More importantly, if the description that these were a 'fault alert' system is accurate, this is not a data-heavy application. Perhaps a few SMSes, per unit, per year, unless the units are really crap, or have to survive an especially brutal environment.
While(at least in the US) most telcoes wouldn't bother to spit on you if you asked for
in the us the data link is more then just fault al (Score:4, Informative)
in the us the data link is more then just fault alert lights are linked to each other some of same Controllers are used on ramp meters , lane control systems and more as well passing data on traffic levels.
any ways us data costs are high like $.01/KB, 1 MB - $4.99, 100 MB $19.99/mo or $35.00 for 200meg and then $0.10 per meg and that's the per line costs.
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Those prices you quote are for a person (notice the article) with one phone. I guess the even prices in the US will be different if you buy it bulk (hundreds of traffic lights). And - in the rest of the world, the prices are A LOT better - i (in Estonia, EU) pay about 6$ per month for unlimited traffic on my cell phone - only the speed is capped at 2mbit - and i am not buying bulk and the traffic lights do not need unlimited traffic.
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GSM data isn't cheap; but(at least in reasonably densely settled areas) it works more or less everywhere and the modules needed to add support for it are quite cheap.
In the UK, GSM works damn near everywhere (there are a few places where I need to break out a yagi, in the north of Scotland), and GSM and GPRS data is too cheap to be worth billing for. In many cases if you just want to send control and status messages you'd just use SMS, which is free.
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In many cases if you just want to send control and status messages you'd just use SMS, which is free.
Perhaps they are on your plan, but not on the pay-as-you-go one I have on my antique Nokia. Yeah, I'm sure you get SMS "free" if you're already paying a fixed monthly rate for calls and GPRS, so if you're only intending using SMS anyway it's hardly free, is it?! (*)
And for non-phone devices using the GSM network for "control and status [SMS] messages" only, it's not likely that they'd be using either of the above tariffs- or anything other that they're likely to sell Joe Public- so they'd probably have
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You wouldn't be using that on a commercial device, though. If you're deploying a large quantity of GSM-enabled devices you'd organise with a provider to have a data-only card which costs some small amount and only allows SMS, for a fixed rate based on how much traffic you're likely to throw at it.
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The costs of GSM data compared to the cost of the rest of a trafficlight is almost 0, even if you use expensive dataplans.
An intersection, with everything, pavement, inductor loops, lights, everything you need for a busy intersection, sets you back about a million.
Gridlock because of a broken light? Expensive.
And when we are talking about fault reports, it's not just "I'm not working!", it's "light X is broken now" if a direction has no working red lights anymore then the whole intersection needs to go into
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Why have GSM cell? fiber / wifi / microwave / e-net are cheaper when you look at the high cost of GSM data?
High cost of GSM data? What are you talking about?
Are you posting from South Africa? How would you know the cost? Its the government. They may get all the sims they need by edict for all you know.
Nothing in the story spoke about GSM DATA. These were probably simple calling sims. If they were DATA only sims (like used in the Nook and other devices) the thieves would not be able to run up a phone bill.
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There is no such thing as a "data only sim". The GSM data vs voice lockup happens on the mobile operator's network side not on the sim card.
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The network operator can easily disable all voice calls (or fax calls, or SMS's) for a given SIM. A SIM is a SIM is a SIM, but selling data-only plans is cheap and easy.
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Because a solution should be cost effective for the environment.
GSM is an infrastructure that's already in place. Everything else, you'd have to build out the infrastructure yourself.
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GSM requires zero infrastructure. No digging of trenches or stringing of cables. When I worked on traffic systems we used photovoltaic power and cellular communications anywhere we might have had to trench more than 100 metres or so. Now the wireless solutions are still cheaper and labour is increasingly expensive. Ten metres of trenching would probably justify using wireless.
Our hard wired leased lines were changed such that we located our severs in the same exchange areas as the signals. We had twenty of
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GSM data is dirt-cheap for the phone company, so if you are in a position to negotiate and there is some competition, then GSM is definitely the simplest way and infinitely cheaper than laying a cable (if you don't have a data cable already there for other purposes). If you need to transfer common sizes of data (excepting, say, video from traffic cameras), then there is no reason for GSM data to be expensive at all.
For example, in banking here I've seen now a trend for credit card POS terminals in various v
Wouldn't the GSM antennas have been a hint ? (Score:3, Interesting)
Isn't it possible that the thieves worked this out, and only targeted the lights with the antennas ?
Re:Wouldn't the GSM antennas have been a hint ? (Score:4, Informative)
The antennas we use on our traffic lights look like this:
http://www.m2mconnectivity.com.au/sites/default/files/imagecache/product_full/images/ubcart/920142_001.jpg [m2mconnectivity.com.au]
So it's just a black circle on top. Unless you know what you are looking for, nobody would expect this to be an antenna.
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Not hidden, but different, like this:
http://www.m2mconnectivity.com.au/sites/default/files/imagecache/product_full/images/ubcart/920142_001.jpg [m2mconnectivity.com.au]
You cannot hide the antenna in a steel cabinet. No reception in there. But a small black circle on top does the job. (I work in this exact field, trafficlights and the traffic light side of remote management)
not very well thought out.... (Score:2)
Would it not have been fairly simple to put in some sort of security that basically warned when an authorized SIM was being used outside what should have been a fixed location? Hell for that matter wouldnt a simple alarm when the sim was removed been sufficient. Hard to believe a team of engineers would overlook or simply dismiss such a gaping flaw.
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You could possibly make it so it shocks whoever is tampering with it too.
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a simple alarm when the sim was removed
Thats brilliant. I wonder why they don't send texts letting people know that the sim was removed...
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Even simpler to just bar voice (and data if you are using SMS) calls
Hell for that matter wouldnt a simple alarm when the sim was removed been sufficient.
If the system uses data have it send a status signal every so often, not getting this means you need to send a crew out. If the last status messages wern't along the lines of "N
Useless SIMs (Score:2)
Why weren't the SIMs PIN protected ? (Score:2)
The vendor who built this system should have used an encoded PIN to tie the SIM to the embedded system it was built into. That way the SIM on it's own is fairly useless without the rest of the electronics.
They also should have had a 'phone home' facility so that whoever is monitoring the system would have noticed when the systems were compromised.
Fitting tamper switches to the enclosure (door opened, removed from pole, etc would have been sm
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Assuming the vendor provided the sim, rather than (and far more likely) the JRA.
SIM cards with a 'phone home' facility? That would be a neat trick.
Why general SIM cards ? (Score:2)
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Exactly. I completely agree.
Talk about LAZY. This is a real simple matter to make sure these phones can only call a certain range of numbers. ( Problems, updates, configuration etc may all be at different numbers. )
But also are these not data only devices. Why the heck was voice even allowed?
These could all have been easily configured on the providers switch.
Did anyone think to ask... (Score:2)
Definitely an inside job (Score:2)
'No-one apart from JRA and our supplier knows which intersections have that system.'
This reminds me when my Dad's RCA location put up a chain link fence around the place. The next weekend, the fence was stolen!
Well, duh! That fence was probably sold to another customer a week later.
So I would think that someone at "JRA and our supplier" has a friend at a bar, and one night he said, "Oh, did you know that there are SIM chips in traffic lights now . . ."
Profit split.
BEE hard at work (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:PIN numbers? (Score:4)
SIM cards are typically protected with a SIM card.
That level of redundancy would make it doubly worth while to steal a sim. Two-Fer!!!
Are you sure you didn't mean a sim PIN is used to protect a sim card?
Re:PIN numbers? (Score:5, Informative)
There are two options... and we are using both:
1) a. get the network to turn off voice capability so that the cards are data only
1) b. limit the data bill to R20 (about US$3) per month (which we calculated would be adequate for most transaction volumes)
2) migrate the SIM base to a private APN so that the SIMs become point to point VPN data SIMs (i.e. can only connect to our servers)
In the case of the JRA, the traffic lights had to be vandalised to get to the SIMs... so the cost to the city is going to be a lot more than just simply replacing the SIMs. In our case we did not care because we did not think that staff would vandalise their own terminals (it would be known who did it) and we deliberatly spread the word that the SIMs are useless for anything but what they were intended for because they were locked down to our private APN.
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3) Limit the SIMs to only dial into the few numbers they need to.
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And when a number is changed? or added?
Nope. Locking them down to the APN was much better.
Presumably they know which numbers were being called, it can't be that difficult to find out who did this.
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Presumably they know which numbers were being called, it can't be that difficult to find out who did this.
We're not talking about Baltimore here, we're discussing South Africa.
Obviously the proper way to go would have been to have the cellphone company restrict the calls to a single number for all of those SIMs, but we've all seen that cellular companies won't actually do such trivial things for customers; apparently they won't even do them for governments.
It seems like we need to get to worldwide IP telephony post-haste so we can do away with the phone companies' control over who can have a phone number.
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The cost to the city of the vandalised traffic lights will be mitigated by the savings in time, fuel and brake wear of the thousands of people who use that bit of road.
but how will they get there cut the phone companie (Score:2)
but how will they get there cut the phone companies likely will not a 3rd party after some this big.
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The crime is not likely to be easily repeated
No? It sounds like the city got a "shark bump" as it were. Someone tried stealing a few of the cards, and it worked. Only after succeeding, and no mitigation efforts, the thieves went to town From TFA:
The vandalism began with a few lights in November and we repaired them. Over December the thieves struck again, this time hitting hundreds more, including the ones we had repaired
This isn't unlike homes targeted by burglars who return a couple of weeks later after the owner has purchased all new shiny, expensive electronics.
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"to take the British Hawk fighter jets rather than a much cheaper Italian alternative."
Why buy a system thats requested when everybody wins with another contact?
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Another protection would be IMEI locking with the carrier so the SIM couldn't be used elsewhere.
Just for information:
IMEI identifies the phone, not the SIM. You can not lock the IMEI to the carrier and even if you could, it wouldn't have anything to do with using SIM.
And SIM is always locked to a carrier. You can only get on one carrier's network or its roaming partner's network.
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The network sees both the IMEI and the SIM ID. It's quite possible for the network to say "I don't like that IMEI or that IMEI/SIM combination."
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Sorry that does not fit into the project plan.
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I work in this exact field (trafficlight manufacturer and we also deliver wireless GSM network features)
And it's simply not something we have time for. I try to warn for the biggest flaws, but security is not high on the priority list. If you want abuse? I could turn a whole city to chaos by turning all lights red. Remotely. They are not connected to the internet (thank god for that, they where that smart) but if you open up 1 cabinet you have access to the network.
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Ladies and gentlemen, Michael Richards!
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In these countries, you have gangs of people specializing in stealing copper wire from the power/phone lines, which would seem even less rational for somebody from an industrialized country.