Virtual Coach » Spoofing your colleagues' iPhone wi-fi location positioning system

Spoofing your colleagues' iPhone wi-fi location positioning system

April 15, 2008 Barbara No comments

While I certainly

do not recommend the following for, ahem, gently applying to annoying co-workers who worship their iphone, it IS rather fascinating….

Zurich (Switzerland) – It was just a matter of time: Researchers from the ETH Zurich breached the iPhone’s/iPod’s Wi-Fi positioning system and found that the technology is vulnerable to location spoofing. If you get a kick out of upsetting iPhone users, you may be able to trick the device into displaying a false location with very little effort.

The lack of a GPS module in the first generation iPhone was a surprise to some, given the fact that the device comes with a fantastic Google Maps integration. Apple was able to almost fix this problem by rolling out support for Skyhook’s WiFi Positioning System (WPS) with a software update, but if you ever had doubts that this alternative positioning system is not as reliable as GPS, your doubts are now confirmed.

Srdjan Capkun of the Department of Computer Science and his team of researchers at ETH said they analyzed the security of Skyhook’s positioning system and were able to break through it in a fairly simple manner …MORE….

And to think…back when I was at AT&T, we contented ourselves by rotating the optical mouse pad 90 degrees. (that ensures the mouse can ONLY move up or down OR left or right – not both).