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Unveiling secrets of the ESP32: creating an open-source MAC layer

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Re: Unveiling secrets of the ESP32: creating an open-source MAC layer

#71

Post by 2Gkashmiri »

halJordan wrote: post #55
2Gkashmiri wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol. The Chinese fud is pretty hard. Do you know about this https://www.swisscommunity.org/en/news-media/swiss-review/ar... https://www.reuters.com/technology/cybersecurity/governments... So... you are basing your fears on just that, hunches and yet presumably your own government is spying on others and maybe you but that doesnt bother you because USA /five eyes are the "good guys"

Thats a false dichotomy, a false equivalence- it's just a lot of false stuff

what is false?

Re: Unveiling secrets of the ESP32: creating an open-source MAC layer

#72

Post by mardifoufs »

halJordan wrote: post #55
2Gkashmiri wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol. The Chinese fud is pretty hard. Do you know about this https://www.swisscommunity.org/en/news-media/swiss-review/ar... https://www.reuters.com/technology/cybersecurity/governments... So... you are basing your fears on just that, hunches and yet presumably your own government is spying on others and maybe you but that doesnt bother you because USA /five eyes are the "good guys"

Thats a false dichotomy, a false equivalence- it's just a lot of false stuff

How are the two not equivalent? If anything, for anyone living in the west it's probably less of an issue to have China spy on them than a western government. Sure, at a state security level it's not but for regular individuals I sure would rather have China spy on me since they can't do anything to me directly.

Re: Unveiling secrets of the ESP32: creating an open-source MAC layer

#73

Post by mardifoufs »

jszymborski wrote: post #67
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wifi is easy... there's no way to send anything undetected, since you control the routers, etc. GSM->5G modems are a lot harder to debug... maybe now in recent years with cheaper SDRs, but a lot harder then wifi. And not sure why you'd be afraid of CCP, we saw the wikileaks, USA does a lot of similiarly bad stuff too and even got caught doing it... and if you live in a "western" country, USA has much easier access to…

> And not sure why you'd be afraid of CCP, we saw the wikileaks, USA does a lot of similiarly bad stuff... I find little solace in this whataboutism.

It's not whatboutism when there's literally no proof that they are doing mass dragnet spying on western residents. And when we do have tons of proof of western governments doing exactly just that

Again, it's a trendy buzzword to use but it literally isn't a catch all shield to argue that it's fine when we do it. When there's no proof of something happening, maybe we should focus on the thing that we know is happening instead of chasing literal ghosts

Re: Unveiling secrets of the ESP32: creating an open-source MAC layer

#74

Post by RF_Savage »

WatchDog wrote: post #10

The section on trying to attenuate outside wifi signals interested me. There is a bunch of hand wavy information on building faraday cages online, some people suggesting to utilize a microwave oven, since they operate at the same frequency. There are even wifi faraday cages for sale on amazon. However I can't really find much actual benchmark data online about how well these various approaches actually attenuate sign…

Because the stuff on amazon is mostly targeted at consumers, not professionals.

Less about protocol development and more fear of 5G and wifi.

The prices of this things can be quite high. Which is why I bought my small one as used surplus.

One can find a great amount of models from various manufacturers here: https://www.everythingrf.com/search/shielded-test-enclosures

And none of them look cheap. But more "please call for quote"-type of things.

Re: Unveiling secrets of the ESP32: creating an open-source MAC layer

#75

Post by RF_Savage »

finnjohnsen2 wrote: post #13

I wasnt aware of this wifi blob. This feeds a tiny paranoia I have at the back of my head when dealing with esp32/espressif. I have dozens of esp32s around and I love them, but Espressif is 100% Chinese. Im uncomfortable with what I read that every company of significant size in China automatically requires CCP party members to be involved in the company at a high level. So Im very happy to hear people such as these…

It is because of FCC certification requirements. Usually, if the end user can modify the lowlevel radio firmware on the device, the device looses it's FCC certification and cannot be sold in USA.

It also seems that Espressif has bought their wifi IP, so their contracts and licensing terms with the IP vendor likely prevent any sharing.

But FCC is the reason for closed binary blob firmware for all wifi radios out there these days.

Re: Unveiling secrets of the ESP32: creating an open-source MAC layer

#76

Post by jstrieb »

WatchDog wrote: post #10

The section on trying to attenuate outside wifi signals interested me. There is a bunch of hand wavy information on building faraday cages online, some people suggesting to utilize a microwave oven, since they operate at the same frequency. There are even wifi faraday cages for sale on amazon. However I can't really find much actual benchmark data online about how well these various approaches actually attenuate sign…

Maybe you are looking for something like this?

https://www.mattblaze.org/blog/faraday

It's a few years old, but seems pretty thorough.

Re: Unveiling secrets of the ESP32: creating an open-source MAC layer

#77

Post by [deleted] »

mardifoufs wrote: post #72
halJordan wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats a false dichotomy, a false equivalence- it's just a lot of false stuff

How are the two not equivalent? If anything, for anyone living in the west it's probably less of an issue to have China spy on them than a western government. Sure, at a state security level it's not but for regular individuals I sure would rather have China spy on me since they can't do anything to me directly.

[deleted]

Re: Unveiling secrets of the ESP32: creating an open-source MAC layer

#78

Post by jszymborski »

mardifoufs wrote: post #73
jszymborski wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And not sure why you'd be afraid of CCP, we saw the wikileaks, USA does a lot of similiarly bad stuff... I find little solace in this whataboutism.

It's not whatboutism when there's literally no proof that they are doing mass dragnet spying on western residents. And when we do have tons of proof of western governments doing exactly just that Again, it's a trendy buzzword to use but it literally isn't a catch all shield to argue that it's fine when we do it. When there's no proof of something happening, maybe we should focus on the thing that we know is happening…

1) The activities of the US gov't have precisely nothing to do with the probability that a device from China has some backdoor or surveillance function. When someone raises this concern, the response "the USA has a history of surveiling its citizens" is not a rebuttal, it's irrelevant. Thus a whataboutism.

2) Your burden of proof might be different from mine, but one needs to be pretty naive to think that the CCP doesn't surveil western citizens. I doubt their intelligence apparatus is that bad at their job. In fact, I have plenty of reason to believe it's pretty great at it.

[0] https://www.csis.org/analysis/how-chinese-communist-party-us...

[1] https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/04/27/china-ccp-spying-us-pol...

Re: Unveiling secrets of the ESP32: creating an open-source MAC layer

#79

Post by floitsch »

droptablemain wrote: post #25

I picked up an ESP32 devboard recently. I've always been intrigued by embedded but don't have a background in it at all. I have no idea what my first project should be. Any ideas?

Have a look at https://docs.toit.io/tutorials (using Toit).

I wrote lots of easy to follow tutorials there.

It depends a lot on the sensors you have. That said, even without any (or few) sensor(s) you can still have fun with network related applications like a Telegram bot.

Re: Unveiling secrets of the ESP32: creating an open-source MAC layer

#80

Post by baybal2 »

Max-q wrote: post #3

The article claims that the ESP32 costs $5. The reality is around half of that for the MCU, and around $3 for pre certified modules including crystal, PCB antenna or UF-L connector. So it's really affordable. Espressif has also launched a new ESP32C3 based on RISC-V, with modules priced at around $2.

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