95
So does this mean other countries are giving their ships fake Japanese identities in the hopes that it will get them through safely?
The article is over reporting the quality of the data. There's no data with them in the strait, just on either side. The logical conclusion, if it is actually a single ship, is that it crossed the strait. I think it's far more likely that the Indian shipyard that dismantled them has a habit of selling the transponder data for profit, and the Japanese owners want to squeeze their dead ships for 110% revenue, so look the other way. I suppose the only purpose of these transponders would be misdirection during a war, but they seem to have just gotten their money's worth.
Either that or India never actually scrapped them.
Yeah, that’s not very typical. I’d like to make that point.
Well what sort of standards are these ghost oil tankers rebuilt to?
Oh, very rigorous maritime engineering standards.
This is mostly a nothing burger. AIS has basically zero validation built in. I'm not sure where the article is sourcing its data from, but it's probably an open source ship tracking site.
AIS datagrams aren't encrypted, so you can make one with any ship ID and location data you want, then create a station account on one of the open trackers and inject it.
Alternatively, you could get a cheap SDR dongle and broadcast your spoofed messages to a nearby station and let them upload it. It's been a while since played around with SDR, but you could probably get everything you need for around $200. You'd almost certainly be breaking licensing laws doing this, for what that's worth.
Edited to add: Looks like this article is using kpler.com, where you can sign up to be a receiver station and feed them data.
It's not even that involved. The crew can just type in whatever information they want, probably in a settings page on their chart plotter screen.
True, what I was getting at is that AIS alone doesn't prove that there is even any ship at all.
Oh, yeah, true! Like those Virtual ATONs that are in common use.
this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2026
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