SurveillanceDHS grant to fund technology for tracking mobile devices

The University Of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) has been given a $583,000 grant from the Department of Homeland Security to build a system for verifying the location history and chorological track of cell phones and smart phones, tablets, and other mobile devices.

UAB announced the news last week and said that Raghib Hasan, a computer and information sciences professor, will be using the grant. In addition to verifying the location history of cell phones, the grant will also fund research into  eliminating contest fraud as well as “verifying the origin of sea food” and “protecting national security.”

“Preventing forged location history is important for many classified and non-classified applications,” Hasan said. “As an example, the military has many areas that require a person to pass through several checkpoints, and this app we are building will prevent unauthorized people from gaining entrance to a secure location unless they have been through the proper checkpoints.”

Hasan used the Los Alamos National Laboratory as an example. In January the laboratory discovered its computer systems contained a few Chinese-made network switches and replaced two of them because of national security concerns.

According to a UAB release,  the devices were made by H3C Technologies based in Hangzhou, China. The switches were used to manage data traffic on the laboratory’s computer networks.

“What if someone introduces a device of an unknown origin and provenance to a network?” Hasan asked. “Who knows what it contains, or who had access to the device. It could have malware embedded that contains a back door to allow hackers to get in and steal classified and dangerous intellectual material.”