Whiplash January 27 news, according to foreign media reports, Jack Sweeney, a 19-year-old college student in the United States, has developed software specifically for tracking the flight path of Tesla CEO Elon Musk and posted real-time updates on Twitter accounts.
This was seen by Musk as a security threat, so he wrote a $5,000 check in the hope that Sweeney would delete the account.
Sweeney created a Twitter account called @ElonJet that specifically tracks the flight of Musk's private jets around the world. The account was very popular, with more than 83,000 followers.
Musk's communication with Sweeney began in the fall of 2021, one night at 12:13 p.m., Sweeney received a private message from Musk that read: "Can you delete this account?" This poses a security risk! But it wasn't until the next morning that the awakened Sweeney replied, "Yes, I can, but it could cost you 1 Model 3, just kidding!" ”
@ElonJet is just one of 15 flight tracking accounts created by Sweeney that are run by programs he wrote to parse data and tweet each time a selected plane takes off or lands.
Each account focuses on just one celebrity, almost all of whom are tech mogules, including Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
The popularity of @ElonJet seemed to have frightened Musk himself, who said in a recent interview: "I don't like the idea of being shot and killed by a madman." ”
Sweeney's exchanges with Musk didn't stop, and Musk asked Sweeney how much money he made from @ElonJet account, which the latter said did not exceed $20 a month. Musk then made his own proposal to pay $5,000 to delete the account to help prevent the "madman" from tracking his location.
But Sweeney told Musk to add another 0.0. He wrote: "Is it possible to raise the price to $50,000? It was very helpful for my life in college and might even allow me to buy a car, or even a Model 3. ”
Musk said he would consider it. But so far, he hasn't given Sweeney a penny, @ElonJet account is still running. Sweeney said he didn't mind being ignored. He said he benefited greatly from @ElonJet and other accounts: He gained social media followers, learned how to program, and even got a part-time job in app development at UberJets. What's even better is that the big boy, who claims to be a "fan" of Musk, also personally engaged in dialogue with the idol he has admired for many years.
Although these Twitter accounts have not led to any dangerous incidents so far, at least based on Sweeney's knowledge and the information available online, Musk makes sense. It's normal for many celebrities to be surrounded at the airport by fans, people who want to sell their autographs, paparazzi, stalkers, and others. In recent years, the CEOs of Musk and other tech companies have also become veritable celebrities.
But Twitter robots aren't adored by star chasers, they just continue to parse the data Sweeney told them. The 15 robots used Information from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) where available, including tracking when and where planes took off and landed, as well as their intended paths. However, Musk's private jet and many other planes are on the list, which means that identifiable information is removed from the data.
In this case, Sweeney used data from the ADS-B transponders on most aircraft, which show the aircraft's position in the air in real time through the ADS-B switch. Parsing this information is like solving a logic puzzle: Sweeney's robot can use the plane's altitude, plus the time it takes to receive the data, to determine when the plane will take off or land. They can then cross-reference latitude and longitude with airport databases to determine where the aircraft is leaving or flying.
While Sweeney's bots couldn't figure out where the plane was flying from the blocked FAA data, they could cross-reference real-time ADS-B data with another website that published an anonymous version of the FAA's flight plan. This allows the robot to track planes in real time to match the anonymous FAA flight plan and determine the intended destination of each aircraft. This information is completely public and can be used to track most private jets.
It's a closely watched security breach that just doesn't get people's attention because people need a lot of industry-specific knowledge to understand all this data and understand how to parse it. Sweeney had this background: His father worked in the aviation industry, and Sweeney knew how to track airplanes from an early age. Like many young boys, he said, he would try to identify the type of plane as it flew through the sky, often comparing his guesses with information he found in an online flight tracking app.
When Sweeney explained to Musk where he found the data, the latter was surprised to find that the data was so easy to obtain. He said: "The air traffic control system is really primitive! ”
Musk and Sweeney's most recent exchange came last Wednesday, when Sweeney said he would prefer to get an internship rather than pay in exchange for his deleted account. Sweeney said Musk had not yet replied to the message, but he did not feel ignored. In fact, he thinks he knows why Musk is silent: "If you look up ElonJet, I think he might be on vacation in Hawaii."