A proof-of-concept system for counter-surveillance against spy drones
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Re: A proof-of-concept system for counter-surveillance against spy drones
#2>In other words, they can see what the drone sees, pulling out their recognizable pattern from the radio signal, even without breaking the drone's encrypted video.
The most interesting part of this is how encrypted traffic leaks enough info to be reliably analyzed. Really cool stuff.
Re: A proof-of-concept system for counter-surveillance against spy drones
#3>In other words, they can see what the drone sees, pulling out their recognizable pattern from the radio signal, even without breaking the drone's encrypted video. The most interesting part of this is how encrypted traffic leaks enough info to be reliably analyzed. Really cool stuff.
The key insight is that the drone should store the video to local storage for later (1) recovery or (2) buffered encrypted transmission to the mother ship which would eliminate the leakage of clues about what subject is being spied upon.
Re: A proof-of-concept system for counter-surveillance against spy drones
#4It'd be easy enough to prevent this by not compressing the video feed before it's transmitted.
That's not feasible for Netflix to do, of course, but it'd be trivial for the NSA or other spy agencies.
Re: A proof-of-concept system for counter-surveillance against spy drones
#5>In other words, they can see what the drone sees, pulling out their recognizable pattern from the radio signal, even without breaking the drone's encrypted video. The most interesting part of this is how encrypted traffic leaks enough info to be reliably analyzed. Really cool stuff.
The key insight is that the drone should store the video to local storage for later (1) recovery or (2) buffered encrypted transmission to the mother ship which would eliminate the leakage of clues about what subject is being spied upon.
The problem with that is the video feed is being actively used. If you want to know where someone is going, you can't just make your drone fly around randomly for hours recording video of the area you think they're in, you have to visually acquire your target, and then follow them.
Re: A proof-of-concept system for counter-surveillance against spy drones
#6It'd be easy enough to prevent this by not compressing the video feed before it's transmitted. That's not feasible for Netflix to do, of course, but it'd be trivial for the NSA or other spy agencies.
A more practical solution would be to use constant bitrate compression or to randomize bitrate on the sender side.
Re: A proof-of-concept system for counter-surveillance against spy drones
#7What's really interesting to me here is the watermarking part of this. I imagine a future where everybody has little IR pins on their shoulder and phones scanning encrypted traffic for their watermark...
Re: A proof-of-concept system for counter-surveillance against spy drones
#8Not sure if I would call it clever. Crypto will always leak the amount of data if you don't pad or ensure a constant data rate. Its also far from the first time compression has lead to a side channel. For instance https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRIME
-edit- Even durning world war you if you were listening on enemy radio commucations and they had not been decrypted you could tell if the enemy was planning somthing by noticing a large increase in radio communication. This a long known issue if you dont pad your data and send it at a constant stream. You may leak some information.
Re: A proof-of-concept system for counter-surveillance against spy drones
#9Couldn't you defeat this detection by moving the drone or camera in a pre-programmed pattern that you could then reverse to stabilize the video later?
Re: A proof-of-concept system for counter-surveillance against spy drones
#10Old technique with "spying drone" buzzword