The navigation technology used to track 40,000 shipping vessels worldwide have just been hacked. A team of white hat hackers managed to break the whole thing. This could mean a lot of bad things. Sinister stuff.

Known as the Automatic Identification System, it is used by port authorities and shipping vessel to keep track of nearby craft. Researchers from cybersecurity firm Trend Micro were able to get pass its security systems and cause some trouble using cheap radio equipment.

They made fake ships appear out of nowhere, and real ships disappear, just like ghost ones. This isn't good news.

Having a fake fleet is bad enough, but imagine what black hat hackers could do to take advantage of this vulnerability.

In fact, the whole navigational system for vessels are just broken. Some students from the University of Texas figured out last July how to steer an $80 million yacht off course using fake GPS signals.

The only comforting news is that the good guys got to this first. Which gives them time to hopefully patch things up and add a stronger layer of encryption. [Tech Review]