Open IP Ports Let Anyone Track Ships on Internet

Ars Technica’s Sean Gallagher writes that researchers at Rapid7 Labs discovered the availability of data that allows the tracking of ship movements (34,00 ships at sea) and can pinpoint ships to their exact geographic location. This data is available through Automated Identification System receivers, which are carried aboard ships and navigation markers and many of them are connected via serial port servers directly to the Internet. Rapid7 security researcher Claudio Guarnieri wrote this in a blog post: “Considering that a lot of military, law enforcement, cargoes, and passenger ships do broadcast their positions, we feel that this is a security risk.”