Image by Eva Rinaldi, from Wikimedia Commons

1,000 Concert Tickets Stolen And Resold By Cybercrime Crew

• Written by Kiara Fabbri Former Tech News Writer
• Fact-Checked by Sarah Frazier Former Content Manager

A cybercrime group stole nearly 1,000 concert tickets, including those for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, and resold them on StubHub, raking in more than $600,000.

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• Scheme involved contractors in Jamaica stealing ticket URLs and sending them to New York.
• Over $600,000 was made from reselling stolen tickets between June 2022 and July 2023.
• Arrested suspects Tyrone Rose and Shamara Simmons face grand larceny and conspiracy charges.

The scheme involved employees working for a third-party contractor in Jamaica who accessed and stole tickets from the online ticket platform. The tickets, primarily for Swift’s record-breaking tour, as well as for Adele, Ed Sheeran concerts, NBA games, and the U.S. Open, were resold at inflated prices, as reported by USA TODAY .

According to Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz, the contractors in Jamaica obtained the URLs for tickets and forwarded them to co-conspirators in Queens, New York.

These individuals then downloaded the stolen tickets and resold them on StubHub for significant profit. The fraud took place between June 2022 and July 2023. Katz stated that the total proceeds from the scheme amounted to $635,000, reported USA TODAY.

Two individuals, Tyrone Rose, 20, from Kingston, Jamaica, and Shamara Simmons, 31, from Jamaica, Queens, were arrested last Thursday and face charges of grand larceny, computer tampering, and conspiracy.

If convicted, they could each face three to 15 years in prison. Rose, who was apprehended in New York, allegedly worked with another accomplice in Jamaica to redirect the stolen URLs.

Rose was arrested during a visit to New York and was instructed to surrender his passport, according to Katz’s office on Tuesday. Both he and Simmons pleaded not guilty and were released until their next court appearance on Friday, as reported by AP .

The public defender’s office representing Rose declined to comment, and Simmons’ lawyers had no immediate response on Tuesday, noted AP. The theft targeted high-profile events, with the majority of stolen tickets linked to Swift’s Eras Tour, which grossed over $2.7 billion last year, says USA TODAY.

Other tickets affected included those for major concerts and sporting events. Investigators are still working to determine the full scope of the operation, including the identification of additional suspects, as reported by AP.

StubHub informed USA TODAY on Tuesday that it identified all affected orders and either replaced or refunded them. The company also ended its partnership with Sutherland Global Services.

“Upon discovering this criminal scheme, we immediately reported it to law enforcement and terminated the employees involved,” said Mark Streams, StubHub’s chief legal officer, as reported by USA TODAY.

Image by Erik Mclean, from Unsplash

NASA Achieves GPS Navigation On The Moon For The First Time

• Written by Kiara Fabbri Former Tech News Writer
• Fact-Checked by Sarah Frazier Former Content Manager

NASA and the Italian Space Agency achieved a historic milestone on March 3 when the Lunar GNSS Receiver Experiment (LuGRE) became the first technology demonstration to successfully acquire and track Earth-based navigation signals on the Moon’s surface.

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• NASA’s Artemis missions could benefit from GNSS signals for autonomous navigation.
• The Blue Ghost lander delivered LuGRE and other NASA payloads on March 2.
• LuGRE achieved the highest GNSS signal acquisition at 209,900 miles from Earth.

NASA announced on Tuesday the success of the Lunar GNSS Receiver Experiment (LuGRE), demonstrating that signals from the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), including GPS and Galileo, can be received and tracked on the Moon.

Accurate navigation will be crucial for future astronauts on the Moon, but traditional GPS is ineffective 225,000 miles from Earth. A promising solution is transmitting GNSS data to the lunar surface, allowing spacecraft to autonomously measure time, velocity, and position.

Currently, NASA tracks spacecraft using a combination of onboard sensors and Earth-based signals, often requiring oversight from engineers. By replacing some of these systems with GNSS data, spacecraft could autonomously receive the signals, reducing the need for human operators.

This breakthrough could be crucial for NASA’s Artemis missions and other future lunar and deep-space missions, as it enables spacecraft to autonomously determine their position, velocity, and time with high accuracy.

The development lays the groundwork for advanced navigation systems for future missions to the Moon and Mars.

“On Earth we can use GNSS signals to navigate in everything from smartphones to airplanes,” said Kevin Coggins, deputy associate administrator for NASA’s SCaN (Space Communications and Navigation) Program.

“Now, LuGRE shows us that we can successfully acquire and track GNSS signals at the Moon. This is a very exciting discovery for lunar navigation, and we hope to leverage this capability for future missions.”

The journey to this achievement began on March 2, when Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lunar lander touched down on the Moon, delivering LuGRE along with nine other NASA payloads. Shortly after landing, the team at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland initiated the first science operations for the experiment on the lunar surface.

As the LuGRE data streamed in, the team eagerly awaited results. At 2 a.m. EST on March 3, it was confirmed that LuGRE had acquired and tracked signals from both the GPS and Galileo systems, approximately 225,000 miles from Earth, and achieved its first navigation fix.

In addition to this achievement, the mission holds another milestone for the Italian Space Agency, as the LuGRE payload represents the first hardware from the organization to be deployed on the Moon.

Before its arrival on the Moon, LuGRE had already set multiple records, including the highest altitude GNSS signal acquisition at 209,900 miles during its journey.

The payload’s altitude continued to rise as it reached lunar orbit on February 20, at 243,000 miles from Earth. These records suggest that future missions in cislunar space could also rely on GNSS signals for navigation.

LuGRE’s success in autonomous navigation marks a shift from traditional reliance on Earth-based tracking stations. The payload shows that spacecraft could operate more independently, using GNSS signals for navigation even as far as the Moon.