Thieves spoof GPS and hijack broker accounts to steal data-center cargo
Original title: Highway thieves are spoofing GPS to steal millions in data center-bound cargo
Investigators say more than $100 million in data-center freight has been taken since June, and some of the largest loads were never recovered.
NBC News, citing industry leaders, consultants and investigators, reports that highway thieves are stealing trucks carrying data-center equipment. They post fake shipments, send malicious links to trucking firms that bid, and then use compromised freight-broker accounts to win real loads. Cargo is handed to drivers working with the thieves; in one large case tracking coordinates were spoofed. Targeted goods include servers, fiber-optic cable, memory chips, copper wire and bitcoin-mining machines.
Unconfirmed: The more-than-$100-million figure comes from people advising investigators, not from a single confirmed loss total.
- Cook County estimated one Illinois recovery at about $300,000 in copper and $1 million in power equipment.
- A Los Angeles load bound for Deepcool AI included cooling gear mixed with unrelated consumer freight.
- In two of the largest thefts NBC found, none of the equipment was recovered.
- Off-duty police escorts on two large shipments were hit in hit-and-runs.
Impact: Theft of data-center freight and control of broker accounts
- Victims
- Deepcool AI
- Countries
- United States
From the original article
1 min read at arstechnica.com
Investigators explain how highway thieves stole $100M in data center equipment.
By Ashley Belanger · arstechnica.com
A short excerpt; the article and its images belong to the publisher. Summary, key facts and assessment above are AI-written from the article and can be wrong.