Waze App Hacked?

Some of you might recall a story circulating about 10 days ago about the negative aspects of the app Waze.

Waze is an app that is considered a “social GPS”, where the GPS function is augmented by drivers actually on the road reporting real-time traffic tie-ups, construction, accidents and other things which affect driving conditions.

The story from 10 days ago went that the app was directing traffic through quiet neighborhoods not used to commuter traffic, through mostly unused roads, perhaps roads not constructed for heavy traffic. This story was heavily circulated.

I’m sorry, but when I worked at Luden’s Candy Factory in Reading, PA and had to rush through my ‘secret routes’, I didn’t give a tinkers damn which route I took.

But, I will tell you about a secret route I found in to work, here in DC.  Waze would have appreciated it.  I was working in a building near the Pentagon and wanted to avoid I-395, a traffic jam if there ever was one.  I found one, two, three roads, which were almost always clear of traffic and allowed me to get there in about 20 minutes, almost a miracle, even compared with I-395 at midnight.

Then there was the disclosure that Waze was used by the NYPD cop killer, here.

So tonight, when a friend called and told me that his copy of Waze was malfunctioning and showing city and town names in Hebrew, I thought, easy breezy, this should be all over the news.

Except it wasn’t.

No reporter has broken the news.

I downloaded the app onto my iPhone and tested it out but I could not duplicate the problem…

But imagine if someone could hack a GPS program, route traffic onto commuter routes.  It would suck. Routing them onto medical or emergency evacuation routes would suck for anyone needing assistance, too.

But the residents of the neighborhoods through which the traffic was routed tried to fight back. Cnet reports:

Some locals are trying to fight back by complaining to officials and reportedly logging fake accidents on the app to deter people from taking their neighborhood routes as shortcuts, but Waze said any phony reports are countered by all the real reports people driving through the area are making.

Also, hackers have struck before, here. Interestingly, the hackers contacted Waze on February 2 and received an official response on February 5th.  Then they gave Waze 40 days to fix the problem before making a public disclosure.  Then Google bought Waze.

Now we have a possible hack.  Could this be the same hackers?  If so, their motivation WAS to get Waze to improve the app.

What could be the insidious reasons?  Read the references, it’s not that easy.  Waze says their reports are based on massive amounts of reporting, but can that be the case on routes less traveled?

Thanks for the heads up, Norm!

Since Waze is owned by Google, now, will they respond?  How big must a disclosure be before they follow up?  Might this be a publicity stunt?  I could think of better ways for Google to get free publicity.  Might this be a publicity stunt by the hackers?  Motivation lulz?