Researchers Find ‘Backdoor’ in Encrypted Police and Military Radios
Researchers Find ‘Backdoor’ in Encrypted Police and Military Radios
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Researchers Find ‘Backdoor’ in Encrypted Police and Military Radios
18 comments
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We use the same licensed VHF network at work for the last 30 years. Ever since our local cops switched to 'digital', 'encrypted' radio comms, we regularly pick them up on our VHFs across the entire district, regardless of what frequency we are on.
It's like their whole thing is leaking across the bands, which should not be possible given that it's encrypted but here we are. If it were anyone else, we'd be pursuing them for abusing the frequency band that we pay for but it doesn't feel like a battle that we want to start.
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Maybe don't start the battle, but instead get a private citizen to notify the FCC:
https://www.fcc.gov/sites/default/files/interferencewithradiotvandtelephonesignals.pdf
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If I had to guess, they're using frequency hopping across your frequencies. Afaik, many emergency and LE services use a combination of encrypted and unencrypted radio comms, so you're probably only hearing the unencrypted comms as they hop into your frequency.
I doubt it's related to the backdoor references in the article. But it's been a while since I played around with RF and even when I did, I wasn't really an expert despite it being in the job description.
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Just out of curiosity, when you say you "regularly pick them up", is it intelligible audio (clear voice conversations) or is it the digital modulation that's leaking over to your freqs? I don't have a good answer for the first problem since that shouldn't be possible unless there's an open patch somewhere that shouldn't be enabled, but I can 100% believe the second problem. In either case, it's poor practice from the radio maintainer of the offending system... and it's illegal regardless since their license is not valid for out-of-band transmissions and the modulation format is probably not licensed for use on those freqs. You'd be surprised, but FCC enforcement will take that very seriously.
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and anyone with a decent understanding of basic IT security knew this was going to be a thing. there's a misconception among the big radio manufacturers (looking at you //) that think they're immune to the same security scrutiny as computer networks and security through obscurity is good enough... well they're dead wrong. hell, i'd argue it's even worse given the physical layer is available to anyone that has their "ears" on. give someone an RTL-SDR or HackRF with the right skill set and they'd have a field day with how insecure this stuff is. and there is a ton of legacy stuff out there that never gets updated... but no worries, let's shell out more tax payer money to upgrade their radios again because it never seems to work right the first time... hmm, I wonder why.
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If you have done nothing wrong you have nothing to hide.
I wonder if this message will hold now that the shoe is on the other cock.
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I don't think you're wearing shoes correctly.
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I get where you are coming from, but having this radio decrypted, could pose a direct security risk.
I see the hypocrisy though, when politicians/officials constantly "lose" incriminating evidence, but then vote/lobby against privacy laws.
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backdoors for thee, none for me
18 comments
Don't worry about backdooring Signal and stuff though. Only the "good guys" will have it. We need this to protect kids and fight terrorism and stuff.