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CrabAndBroom

@CrabAndBroom@lemmy.ml

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CrabAndBroom ,

I'm not OP but running it through Wayback Machine worked for me: https://web.archive.org/web/20240612133701/https://www.404media.co/hacker-accesses-internal-tile-tool-that-provides-location-data-to-cops/

If not here's the text of the article (but the link has a bunch of images too that might be useful):

A hacker has gained access to internal tools used by the location tracking company Tile, including one that processes location data requests for law enforcement, and stolen a large amount of customer data, such as their names, physical addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers, according to samples of the data and screenshots of the tools obtained by 404 Media.

The stolen data itself does not include the location of Tile devices, which are small pieces of hardware users attach to their keys or other items to monitor remotely. But it is still a significant breach that shows how tools intended for internal use by company workers can be accessed and then leveraged by hackers to collect sensitive data en masse. It also shows that this type of company, one which tracks peoples’ locations, can become a target for hackers.

“Basically I had access to everything,” the hacker told 404 Media in an online chat. The hacker says they also demanded payment from Tile but did not receive a response.

Tile sells various tracking devices which can be located through Tile’s accompanying app. Life360, another location data focused company, acquired Tile in November 2021.

The hacker says they obtained login credentials for a Tile system that they believe belonged to a former Tile employee. One tool specifically says it can be used to “initiate data access, location, or law enforcement requests.” Users can then lookup Tile customers by their phone number or another identifier, according to a screenshot of the tool.

A drop down menu which is selected in the screenshot tells users to select a request type: “DATA_ACCESS,” “LOCATION_HISTORY,” and “LAW_ENFORCEMENT.”

Hackers in recent years have repeatedly targeted tools used by tech companies to provide data to law enforcement or ones that are otherwise used by the company’s own staff to manage and access data. Sometimes, the hackers gain access to the tool itself, like when one used an internal Twitter system to take over accounts. In another case, a fraudster bribed an insider at Roblox to use that company’s tools for malicious purposes. Some hackers have even taken to installing malware inside U.S. telecoms so they can remotely control internal employee tools themselves.

Hackers also compromise email accounts used by police or other government officials, and then use those to demand sensitive data from tech companies and platforms by posing as the respective law enforcement officer. Targeted companies include Facebook, TikTok, and Apple.

Some of the other internal tools the hacker provided screenshots of include those for transferring Tile ownership from one email address to another; one for creating administrative users; and one for sending a push notification to Tile users. The hacker says they decided not to use this capability.

The hacker says they then accessed another system used by Tile which contained the customer data. The samples the hacker gave to 404 Media included names, addresses, phone numbers, as well as order and returns information and details on the payment method used.

From here, the hacker said they scraped the data. “I was able to enumerate through customer ids. Sent millions of requests to scrape the data.”

404 Media verified the data by randomly selecting a series of email addresses from the data, and then using them to create new accounts on Tile’s website. In most cases this was not possible because the email address was already in use by an existing customer. 404 Media also contacted multiple people inside the data via email.

“Yep, that would be me,” one person said when 404 Media sent all of the data related to their account.

Tile told 404 Media in a statement “Recently, an extortionist contacted us, claiming to have used compromised Tile admin credentials to access a Tile system and customer data. We promptly initiated an investigation into the potential incident. Our investigation detected that certain admin credentials were used by an unauthorized party to access a Tile customer support platform, but not our Tile service platform. The Tile customer support platform contains limited customer information, such as names, addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, and Tile device identification numbers. It does not include more sensitive information, such as credit card numbers, passwords or log-in credentials, location data, or government-issued identification numbers.”

“We disabled the credentials and took swift action designed to prevent any future unauthorized access to the Tile customer support platform and associated Tile customer data. At this time, we are confident there is no continued unauthorized access to the Tile customer support platform,” the statement continued.

Tile suggested in its statement that it was not aware of what data had been taken until 404 Media shared samples of the data for more verification. “Once you supplied us with additional data, we investigated further and determined that it is likely data from the impacted Tile customer support platform. We thank you for bringing this new information to our attention,” it read.

Tile also published a version of this statement on its website, but only after 404 Media contacted the company for comment and proved to it that the stolen data was accurate.

Tile did not respond directly when asked if the hacker had the required access to perform a location data request.

“This is a major breach,” the hacker said. But “it could have been much more major.”

CrabAndBroom ,

No worries!

CrabAndBroom ,

Yeah that's what I do. I use filen because it's nice and easy to use and I got in early and got a good deal on a lifetime plan (actually two because you could stack them at the time, I dunno if you still can), but yeah I encrypt everything locally first before I upload it so it doesn't really matter if it gets stolen or whatever.

If you do that then I don't think it really matters especially where you put it.

CrabAndBroom ,

Assuming they don't win, is there any contingency in place to preserve all their data? I don't know how exactly because I assume there's an absolute fuckton of it, but it would be such a shame if all of that was lost forever.

I'd love to see it become like the Pirate Bay, where they squish one and ten more pop up to replace it, but I don't know if that's even possible.

CrabAndBroom ,

I've been using GPT4All and quite liking it so far.

CrabAndBroom ,

Hmm, not sure exactly. I've been using Llama3 because it seems to give decent results for most things quickly, but I haven't really done much coding with it outside of some simple bash scripts TBH.

CrabAndBroom ,

I have two, one is actually complicated and one was so obtuse that I never would have figured it out in a million years:

Actually complicated: I still don't know how it happened, but somehow an update on Arch filled the boot partition with junk files, which then caused the kernel update to fail because of no disk space, which then kind of tanked the whole system. It took ages, but with a boot disk and chroot-ing back into the boot partition I eventually managed to untangle it all. I was determined to see it through and not reinstall.

Ridiculous: One day when using Ubuntu, the entire system went upside-down. As in, everything was working perfectly fine, but literally the screen was upside-down. After much Googling I had no luck figuring it out, then I accidentally found the solution - I'd plugged a PS4 controller into the USB on the laptop to charge it, and for some reason Ubuntu interpreted the gyroscope on the controller as "rotate the screen display" so when I moved it, the screen spun round. I only figured it out by accident when I plugged it back it and it spun back to normal lol.

CrabAndBroom ,

Ah I remember that one! Classic. I also remember a story about someone who lost an entire PC in their apartment. It was running and connected to the network, they could ping it, but couldn't physically find it lol.

Let’s not make the same mistakes with AI that we made with social media (www.technologyreview.com)

From the article: "In particular, five fundamental attributes of social media have harmed society. AI also has those attributes. Note that they are not intrinsically evil. They are all double-edged swords, with the potential to do either good or ill. The danger comes from who wields the sword, and in what direction it is swung....

CrabAndBroom ,

Or... hear me out.... we use AI to make social media even more insufferable than it was before.

CrabAndBroom ,

Unlimited scams and Jesus stuff for everyone!

CrabAndBroom ,

And ironically when we do get to the point where an AI can string together a semi-coherent narrative, the first things it'll start to produce will probably be exactly the sort of mid-level dross that Tyler Perry likes to make.

CrabAndBroom ,

Mull is a good one for Android.

CrabAndBroom ,

I had a go on a VR helmet and thought it was kind of fun, but at the moment the options seem to be an affordable one that's infested with Facebook nonsense, or the Valve/Apple ones which are presumably less intrusive but cost a fortune. So I'm fine to just do without until someone figures out how to do it in a cheap, open-source kind of way, like the raspberry pi of VR helmets.

That might not even be possible, but in that case I'm also fine to just do without TBH.

CrabAndBroom ,

Hmm, I have a soldering iron and a 3D printer. You might be right. Thanks for the link!

CrabAndBroom ,

Yeah same here. Don't have TPM, not buying a new CPU just to enable Microsoft's bullshit, so we are at an empasse.

CrabAndBroom ,

It's kind of bittersweet being a very tail-end Gen X person. On the happy side, I got to do my childhood and teen years in the "fuck about" era, but on the unhappy side my entire adulthood has been in the "find out" era, and I get to remember what it was like briefly living in a world that wasn't entirely going to shit.

CrabAndBroom ,

I mean you could even take the bottom number and leave them with the top number and they could still live in unimaginable luxury forever. Or just take the lot because fuck em lol.

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