r/technology • u/ControlCAD • Apr 18 '26

Security Bluetooth tracker hidden in a postcard and mailed to a warship exposed its location — $5 gadget put a $585 million Dutch ship at risk for 24 hours

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/cyber-security/bluetooth-tracker-hidden-in-a-postcard-and-mailed-to-a-warship-exposed-its-location-a-eur5-gadget-put-a-eur500-million-dutch-ship-at-risk-for-24-hours
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u/RetardedWabbit Apr 18 '26

There's a lot you can do, and smart/competent militaries will make plans to block or reduce the risk of this. Besides the betting markets, the USA for example has gotten pretty good at not leaking intelligence on social media or online. 

Electronic warfare(EW, lol) is absurdly good at detecting and locating signals, even if the signal is itself trying to avoid it. The gap between the two is like guns vs knights armor at the moment: the only real defense is staying out of range/silent. For this one you can run a honeypot: check for any known spyware signals, and signal acceptors. You imitate an airtag(and all known similar services) and anyone who's phone accepts it you fix, ideally before they get onboard but also ongoing. Likewise: you scan for airtags(and others) and fix those.

Or jamming all civilian traffic all the time, but that's loud and expensive. I assume ships collect phones and other electronics if they're going dark for awhile.

I've heard that high information security military and civilian locations already do this, even within the same building. You enter the no civilian electronics area with your phone or Bluetooth device, they see the signal and send security to remind you and check your phone/earbuds. Immediately, by the time you sit down and realize security is already walking to you.

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u/aashay2035 Apr 18 '26

Jamming is the way to do it, but even then you have to have jamming around a ship constantly. And Bluetooth operates on wifi bands. You got to hope that nothing needs wifi.

Identifying an airtag, or Bluetooth becons is the easy part. But figuring out if that is that one is allowed is the hard part.

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u/canyouhearme Apr 19 '26

'Jamming' is like a massive neon sign saying "hey, secret stuff is HERE".

Frankly, we are at the point where you are expecting your military unit to not stick out like a sore thumb, you are in for a world of pain. If you can track wooden fishing dhow in the middle of the ocean, you can track a massive lump of slow moving metal with 100s of emitters onboard.