Researchers' budget blown when a migrating eagle's tracker chip connects to an Iranian cellular tower and sends expensive SMSes

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Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/10/26/high-fliers.html

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The price per SMS in Kazakhstan was about 15 roubles (18p; 30 US cents), but each SMS from Iran cost 49 roubles. Min used up the entire tracking budget meant for all the eagles.

So. 14 eagles. One cost 3.3x as much, and spent the entire tracking budget meant for all the eagles? Even if we’re generous and say half the path was backlogged for a ‘summer’ of six months, they had a remaining budget for… 1.4 months. :thinking:

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I had no idea eagles covered that much ground. Thats pretty cool and a surprisingly large range that different eagles went to in the winter

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with the plan that it would stay connected for the next seven days and only incur a charge of $0.25 for the whole week’s service.

I bet they automatically “cut” the call themselves every so often. And then “kindly” offered the $500 bill.

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And this is why they didn’t have the Eagles fly the ring to Mordor. QED!

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This was obviously a Russian spy eagle, remotely infecting Iranian industrial computers, which are apparently wide open to attack.

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@doctorow follows the mantra write what you know. :grinning:

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Good to see that eagles are no smarter than I am

They didn’t spend a week in Walt Disney World.

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Genius. Thank you.

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