When Geo goes Wrong
Talkat AppSec California 2015 · on Tuesday, 2015-01-27· at 16:15· Annenberg Community Beach House: Track 4, 415 Pacific Coast Hwy·
summary
Research reverse engineers Grindr protocol via a MitM proxy because of no SSL pinning, reads JSON blobs that include subcentimeter or ~3 m relative distances, and finds APIs that accept arbitrary coordinates, require no authentication, and impose no rate limits. A custom trilateration framework and thousands of queries/sec let investigators map and track users worldwide, correlate home/work via public records, and demonstrate identity disclosure; partial patches reduce precision but SSL pinning and open APIs initially remain exploitable.
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chapters (6)
- 0:00Geolocation tracking risks
- 1:54Geolocation bugs in mobile apps
- 10:07SSL issues in networks
- 16:04Grindr tracking case study
- 26:19Developer fixes and user protection
- 27:02Q&A
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