Fitness App Reveals Location of French Carrier Strike Group
French officials were embarrassed and worked quickly to correct an incident after the newspaper Le Monde on Thursday revealed it had been able to pinpoint the location of the carrier Charles de Gaulle thanks to a smartwatch application. French President Emmanuel Macron had announced earlier in the month that the multinational carrier group had been repositioned into the Eastern Mediterranean to support French allies, and the newspaper was able to reveal the exact location.
French Rear Admiral Thibault Haudos de Possesse, who commands the group, had made a presentation on March 13 at the Ministry of the Armed Forces highlighting the firepower of the group. Ten days earlier, Macron had announced the group would be repositioned after having departed Toulon on January 27. The admiral highlighted that in addition to the carrier Charles de Gaulle, the group is comprised of three French frigates, "two air defense frigates and one multi-mission frigate (FREMM) as well as a force replenishment ship, the Jacques Chevallier." He said aboard the aircraft carrier are twenty Rafale Marine fighter jets, two Hawkeye airborne early warning aircraft, and three helicopters, and joining the group are an Italian frigate, a Spanish frigate, and a Dutch frigate.
Le Monde reported on Thursday that it had found the exact location of the group and proved it with a satellite photo. It reported the location as being approximately 100 km (62 miles) off the Turkish coast and near Cyprus. It said it had been able to establish the location using data from a popular fitness app on a smartphone.
According to the paper, a young officer whom it called “Arthur” had gone for a run on March 13 either aboard the carrier or one of the escort ships. He ran about 7 kilometers (more than 4 miles) on deck and logged his run on his smartphone. It was using the app Strava, which tracks location data and produces a heatmap of the locations where it is being used. With that publicly available data, Le Monde was able to pinpoint the carrier.
A spokesperson for the French Navy told the media the application did not “comply with current instructions.” If the report was true, they said, “appropriate measures would be taken.”
It is not the first time Le Monde has highlighted the vulnerabilities using the same app. News reports said it was first highlighted for its tracking capabilities in 2018, and since then, there have been incidents where the app permitted the tracking of Macron’s bodyguards, the Secret Service detail assigned to Joe Biden, and helped to locate U.S. and allied bases in Syria, Afghanistan, and Djibouti.
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The popular app is reportedly used by 195 million people and is the latest example of common consumer technology exposing vulnerabilities. In the United States, there was a long-running debate about the popular app TikTok because it was owned by a Chinese company. The U.S. had barred government employees and the military from using it and threatened to shut down the app unless it was sold to an American company.
Strava reportedly automatically tracks its users and creates public profiles. Users have to manually reset the app and change the privacy settings to hide their location and other details.