Hacker Claims To Hack US Location Tracing Company, Gravey Analytics
JAKARTA - An unknown hacker claims to have hacked US location tracing company Gravey Analytics. This is known through a screenshot of claims circulating online. It is not clear how and under what conditions the hack occurred. Posts in Russian and screenshots uploaded early Sunday to the XSS site, which is popular with cybercriminals seeking attention. The post contains claims that the company has been hacked and a lot of data has been stolen.
MEDIDIA's attempt to contact the location intelligence company Unacast, which announced a merger with Gravey in 2023, was unsuccessful. Gravy's website was disrupted on Wednesday January 9 and repeated messages were not answered. A man who answered the door at Unacast's small office in the joint workspace in Ashburn, Virginia, said he was not authorized to speak to the media.
Experts who reviewed about 1.4 gigabits of reportedly leaked data and posted on the web, around the time of the hacking claims, said the information appeared to have come from Gravity. "That's amazingly convincing," said Marley Smith, a major threat researcher at cybersecurity firm RedSense, quoted by Reuters. Johncheam from cybersecurity firm Huntress had the same conclusion.
Gravity is one of two companies that were dragged into recent action by President Joe Biden over a broker specifically in using mobile data to offer very detailed information about where individuals are at any given moment.
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The data can be used to adjust online ads or applied to government and corporate surveillance. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has expressed concerns that this could facilitate bullying, money laundering, and surveillance.
In December, the FTC announced a settlement with Gravey and another broker, Mobilewalla, after accusing the two of engaging in misleading practices by collecting location data without proper approval.
The FTC declined to comment on the hacking report. In a statement published last month, FTC chairman Lina Khan said, "The billion-dollar industry based on ads based on targets may currently leave sensitive American data very open."