Cyber Poaching: Poacher's try to hack data from Tiger's GPS Collar

The Global Positioning system is a space based satellite navigation system that provided information anywhere on earth. A GPS receiver calculates its position by precisely timing the signals sent by the GPS satellites high above the earth. Each satellite continually transmits messages that include a) the time the message was transmitted. b) satellite position at the time of message transmission. The receiver uses the messages it receives to determine the transit time of each message and computes the distance to each satellite using the speed of light. Amazing isn't it? This technology came up with a lot of advancements. 

In fact, GPS technology was a miracle, bringing the days of getting lost to an end. Years back itself it went to new heights were we can track just about anything that moves including human. It played an important role in protection of endangered species. GPS tags and collars were used to track and monitor animals. Now a days it is common for conservationists to put GPS collars on wildlife for monitoring and tracking purposes. 

Time changed. What if the the primary aim goes wrong? or what if the same technology is used against? That is what happened in case of endangered Bengal tigers. In India, Panna Tiger Reserve had attached an Iridium GPS Satellite Collar on a two and a half year old male Bengal tiger. It was identified as Panna-211. These sort of tracking methods doesnt come in cheap. It almost costs $5000 and has satellite and ground-tracking capabilities with an accuracy withint 2.5 meters. This happened on February 2013, explained National Geographic. This was configured to provide data every hour for the first three months and every four hours for the next five months. In July the battery expired and the data stopped. Almost by that time Dr.Krishnamurthy Ramesh, head of monitoring program, received a notification that someone more than 620 miles away had attempted accessing his email account where the GPS data was sent. Even though the server prevented the access, what might have happened if those guys got the data? Dr.Ramesh says it can be decoded only with specialised data converter software and specific radio collar product information. Not only that, only three people have legal access to the location data of the tiger's collar. 

Even though this first attempt of hacking have been successfully defeated, it still raises debates about the security that should be provided and also about the rise of new hacking technique to track the animals to be hunted. This means poachers are on the go and they are trying to hack into GPS collars. This leads to a new term called "cyber-poaching". We have overcome a lot of cyber security threats which includes spearing, phishing etc. but cyber poaching takes us into another level. It is not only a threat to endangered species, but what if happens when it gets into another levels in civilian role. Mind you, we have a lot of GPS techniques used lately in our daily life which includes the car we drive.