11–20 of 93 posts
Few things evoke feelings of the early internet like intercepting unencrypted communications in the wild with off the shelf hardware and software. It's some how comforting to realize this is still possible today.
Considering how much progress that has been made in encrypting internet traffic radio seems painfully slow in evolving to be more secure. Edit: specifically radio protocols not carrying internet traffic
Shouldn’t we link to the original YouTube video? This website just reposts it with no analysis, a bunch of ads, and some janky scroll hijacking.
It's text and not video. Just speaking personally I wouldn't have clicked on or commented on a youtube video link. rtl-sdr.com is pretty decent aggregator as far as hobby SDR goes despite their bias in promoting their custom rtl-sdr dongle.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Considering how much progress that has been made in encrypting internet traffic radio seems painfully slow in evolving to be more secure. Edit: specifically radio protocols not carrying internet traffic
Aren't there FCC regulations that forbid encryption over non-military radio?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Considering how much progress that has been made in encrypting internet traffic radio seems painfully slow in evolving to be more secure. Edit: specifically radio protocols not carrying internet traffic
Aren't there FCC regulations that forbid encryption over non-military radio?
Direct link to video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_pCHTeamn8
And possibly intentional misuse for criminal and perhaps non-criminal activity too. 121.5 and 243 MHz are no longer officially monitored for voice distress signals, but I wonder if they're still being gathered on the fleet. Perhaps the best mitigation, I suppose a reduced set of these signals are monitored for voice distress calls. The satellites should support geofenced/location-selective rejection of signals on 406…
What is your basis for a claim that 121.5 (guard) is unmonitored? As a pilot I can say that claim is false - guard is very actively monitored everywhere in the United States. Were you referring to some other locations?
ATC does still monitor 121.5, but that's with an eye towards voice transmissions, not radio beacon activations. COSPAS-SARSAT has never carried voice traffic on 121.5, the satellites attempted onboard Doppler direction finding of the beacon tone (not very accurate at all, one of the reasons it is obsolete). At the same time, ATC no longer has RDF capability from most (all?) GATRs, so receiving the ELT beacon tone is mostly useless to ATC, and ATC is unlikely to receive it anyway since GATRs have very poor coverage down to ground. ELTs do still transmit on 121.5 for convenience of search aircraft, but it's becoming increasingly irrelevant with high COSPAS-SARSAT coverage (if the ELT activated at all, rescue coordinators already know the location by GPS coordinates) and increasing rarity of direction finding equipment (and pilot experience with RDF) on aircraft.
One way to sum it up is this: 121.5 is monitored for distress calls from aircraft in the air, but it is not monitored for distress calls from aircraft on the ground. The latter is the goal of search and rescue systems, and the use of 121.5 has been replaced by the much more modern COSPAS-SARSAT system originally developed for maritime rescue.
Shouldn’t we link to the original YouTube video? This website just reposts it with no analysis, a bunch of ads, and some janky scroll hijacking.
And possibly intentional misuse for criminal and perhaps non-criminal activity too. 121.5 and 243 MHz are no longer officially monitored for voice distress signals, but I wonder if they're still being gathered on the fleet. Perhaps the best mitigation, I suppose a reduced set of these signals are monitored for voice distress calls. The satellites should support geofenced/location-selective rejection of signals on 406…
Besides, there's not really much motivation to mitigate this problem. First, pirate satellite communications by SARSAT transponders are rare compared to other satellite systems very popular with pirates like legacy US Navy communications satellites. Second, satellite piracy isn't that popular overall. Mitigating the ability of criminal organizations to communicate this way would require taking down a lot of different satellite systems, and then they would just fall back to HF radio, which is already the more popular approach. It's doubtful there would be any major reductions in crime and the type of crime that seems to motivate the most use of satellite piracy---unlicensed fishing near the Phillipines---isn't super high on the list of international priorities.
Few things evoke feelings of the early internet like intercepting unencrypted communications in the wild with off the shelf hardware and software. It's some how comforting to realize this is still possible today.
Considering how much progress that has been made in encrypting internet traffic radio seems painfully slow in evolving to be more secure. Edit: specifically radio protocols not carrying internet traffic
As we all learned in WWII, a code is better than encryption when you need complex PKI to achieve encryption. It’s more flexible, and can even convey nuances not intended. Ah, sorry I mean a language, not a code. But still, code words and phrases are still a thing.