The only one of these I’ve seen is the picture posted above but, it’s possible they look different on the outside (e.g., maybe an antenna).

it could be those prawns stealing them lol

The traffic signal controllers don’t contain the SIM cards directly, instead they connect via RS-232 to some form of GSM/CDMA-enabled Serial-over-IP device (One such product is the Metretek Invisconnect). These are used to talk to remote serial device all over the place, including vending machines (newer Coke machines can phone in problems/stock), electronic message boards on the highways, and traffic controllers. In these cases, the devices
are usually dial-on-demand, or in rare cases, set to phone in once every few hours.

Outside of RS-232 adapters, MANY devices use embedded cellular modems, including modern alarm systems, RedBox movie rentals, and arcade machines (Golden Tee, or anything with national leaderboards).

Embedded cellular devices are far from uncommon, which really makes it look like an inside job, since they are only targeting traffic cabinets.

The lites with a sim card have a Nokia sticker on them

How do they know they aren’t breaking into all of them and not just putting back together the SIMless lights?

Would one of the GSM interceptor projects be able to get these to connect to it and then be able to increase traffic making triangulation easier?

@mowcius
In that case, you just need to have your spectrum analyser handy and induce a fault, like removing/shorting a lamp or one of the sensors.

The ones in the UK have a Black or Grey block fixed to the controller box. The block is the antenna and the sim cards are usually data only so not really usefull.

The one in the picture above is a german trafficlight. They usually use frequences like the BOS-Funk (“public safety communication systems”)

That picture… those are more likely speakers. As the antenna is contained within the cabinet.

The cabinet looks something like this:
http://www.ustraffic.net/images/astccabinet-med.png
(more likely in a gray color)
And the antenna looks more like this:
http://www.gsm-modem.de/image/antenna_gsm-GPS.jpg
Only the black part is mounted on the outside.

So identifying the right lights is easy, just check the outside of the cabinets. Black cap on it? Most likely GSM enabled.

I work in this field, so I kinda know what I’m talking about. The stupid part is in the SIMs, it’s we only use SIMs that cannot be used for calling. And are locked down to a different network. If you steal them they are useless.
Also, our traffic lights trigger silent alarms when you open them.

Oh, wait never mind. The embedded sim was just a suggested fix on Engadget.

Im from South Africa, and I can honestly say that its definitely not a hack , there just not clever enough to do that sort of thing, most likely its a syndicate that got the information from the people who install these lights, that’s normally what happens here, info gets leaked they get paid a bribe, simple as that,nothing special.

@Azdle

not in the UK. the owner or local authority provide the sims. So solder sims would be useless if the owner wants to change the contract.

Pretty bone-headed of them to not only allow communications in the way that this method requires. If it sends status information via SMS to a certain number, the account should be locked to only sending SMS’s to a specific number.

If they stick the traffic light controllers in the big all metal NEMA boxes like they do in my area, then they most certainly would have an external antenna. It may just be that the officials are too boneheaded to notice the difference between a cellular unit and a non-cellular.

I’ll expand on FaSMaB’s post to say that in SA, while there’s the local expertise to go the technical route, the pervasive poverty encourages the social engineering approach. The economics of poverty also suggests that *even if* the sim cards were configured for minimal services, they’d still be considered worth stealing.

They should hire people to direct traffic by hand like North Korea. That would solve it.

The Development lifecycle MUST now include (for critical systems) ‘hacker’ testing incidences
Secrutiry is KEY most people are oblivious to this

What gets me is that its a simple point-and-click in the m2m cellular provider interface. Limit data to say, 3mb per month and if you get an overage alert that sim is suspect. Least that’s how it works on this side of the water.

Part 2 is, why can’t they poll the light and kill the sim if they don’t get correct responses?

@Jtaylor @wigwam GSM allows “local networks” at special prices. For example an company could set a local network for it’s employees. The employees are allowed to communicate with each other, but the other functions are limited or not available at all.
Under GSM an call is anonymous as much as provider allows it. GSM calls are traceable up to some extent. The problem occurs if there is too much untagged SIMs, or SIMs with same ID, too much bleeps on the screen…

As FaSMaB said it must be an criminal syndication or corruption at work. At $3,000 per unit (overpriced) and unlimited anonymous SIM inside (why), there is a lot of money to go around.

Bah, Finland’s had SIM cards in traffic lights for aaaaages!

So, I made this collection of info based off of some of the comments posted below the article… If you are lucky enough to be reading all these comments, and you must have been intrigutd by the article, no?

Basically, to perform this “hack/theif” all you need to do is:

A: Observe your local intersections, and look for both visual signs, and wireless spectrum signs of GSM signal communication in the area.

Visual signs:

Black or Grey block(antenna box) fixed to the controller box(Cabinet)
(Cabinet)
http://www.ustraffic.net/images/astccabinet-med.png (can be Grey, Green, Tan, Baise)
(Antenna Box)
http://www.gsm-modem.de/image/antenna_gsm-GPS.jpg
Only the black part is mounted on the outside.
!!!ANTENNA CAN BE INTERNAL!!!
Nokia sticker on Cabinet

Wireless Spectrum signals:
USING OLD BOOMBOX(no clue if legit), or SPECTRUM ANALYER
http://hackaday.com/2010/03/17/im-me-spectrum-analyzer/

BOS-Funk (“public safety communication systems”)
RS-232 to some form of GSM/CDMA-enabled Serial-over-IP
GSM interference (217hz)

!!!!!WARNING UPON OPENING THE CABINETS/LIGHTS!!!!!!
Traffic lights/cabinets trigger silent alarms when you open them.

KEYWORDS I USED:
(Google is your friend here)
RS-232 to some form of GSM/CDMA-enabled Serial-over-IP
Metretek Invisconnect
embedded cellular modems
lights that have an antenna
Black or Grey block fixed to the controller box
GSM interference (217hz)
BOS-Funk (“public safety communication systems”)
the antenna is contained within the cabinet
traffic lights trigger silent alarms when you open them.
Sierra Wireless Raven XT

Once GSM sims have been obtained they probably will only work for DATA(does not mean phone calls won’t work, if your smart) They also only have a limited amount of data that can be used before they are depleated.(Thats what the south afican hit-men are using as burners which are only good for like A SINGLE PHONE CALL/TEXT)

THEY ARE ANONYMOUS(kinda…GSM can be traced but, fuck it, its one phone call, then phone thrown in a garbage truck…)

How to enable phone calls if you can only use data, use VOIP. I am not disclosing which VOIP to use but, suggesting something w/ extremely low bandwidth usage, and ability to be SSH tunneled, also suggesting encrypting text communication w/ Elite-ANONYMOUS SOCK5 proxy-chain, SUPER-SSH, and *encryption scheme here*package encryption.
This all made in a few delicious copypastas….

I just thought I’d mention that, almost all of the comments given thus far deal specifically with the device in question. Which is fine because that’s the main point of the question, and this is afterall, hackaday. However, no one is really making note that we are talking about Johannesburg, South Africa here. This isn’t across the street from the Nokia Headquarters in Tokyo, or by an engineering plaza in Munich. Johannesburg is photographed very well in Google Street View, have a look for yourself. The traffic lights do not look like the one in the photo. In a square in the main downtown part of Johannesburg a lot of the traffic lights have a ‘black bubble’ looking thing that sticks off of them at a 45degree arch. Other traffic lights don’t seem to have them.

Surely there is a method to the madness of which ones have and which ones do not have. Surely if the ‘thieves’ found one that had a S.I.M. card they could logically reason that within a radius of ‘x’ the other traffic lights should have them to.

Also, again, do you have any idea how much corruption and shoddy jobs happen within South Africa. They are not getting ‘traffic light technology’ from the top engineering firms in the world. No. Who knows where the technology came from and who exactly is putting this whole operation together. Maybe whoever was hired to put them in marked them for their own purposes. Maybe there’s a little mark on the devices which have them and which do not.

Anyhow, I think this particular question has more to do with South Africa (Johannesburg), and how they actually ‘installed’ the devices; and less to do with the technology in and of itself. I’m sure if any three of the readers above were to actually walk around Johannesburg, in six minutes they would be able to say “Oh. Wow. Yeah, I’ve figured it out now. That’s so obvious.”

-James.

I live in Johannesburg and I’ve got a set of these traffic lights outside my apartment block. The system was installed to notify a central operations centre built and managed by the city Municipality. The system is passive and intended to dial through to the the control room when a problem is detected in the normal opoeration of the traffic lights. An sms message is sent with location, time, a fault code, current status, etc. This system was installed to ease traffic congestion, improve safety and improve repair turnaround times. The problem is that the Johannesburg Municipality is has degraded to the the point of disfunction. There are no trained staff to repair these traffic lights, no working vehicles to get them there and even then, the national electricity generating authority (Eskom)cannot provide capacity to reliably operate the traffic lights were they to be fixed.