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Why radio receivers won’t tune 800-900 MHz

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Re: Why radio receivers won’t tune 800-900 MHz

#141

Post by giantg2 »

barrkel wrote: post #121
giantg2 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some baby monitors are using "encryption". I don't know if they are actually using encryption or just privacy codes. Even if they are using encryption, I doubt it's very secure stuff (probably 8 bit or something).

Our baby monitor uses DECT - it's basically a cordless telephone. While I wouldn't expect it to be encrypted to any significant degree, in most cases a baby monitor is either broadcasting silence with a little background room noise, or it's turned off. Once a monitor starts broadcasting noise, a parent intervenes.

Some of them are even VOX so that it's not continuously transmitting.

I think the concern (fun for the scanner) was that if people leave the monitor on all the time and then have a conversation in that room.

Re: Why radio receivers won’t tune 800-900 MHz

#142

Post by nabla9 »

t0mas88 wrote: post #116
nabla9 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or GPS receivers not working at high altitude unless you buy some Asian brands with right chipsets.

Note that the rules require GPS receivers not to work when above 60,000ft AND at a speed higher than 1000kt. Some manufacturers made that an OR, but that's not required. You're very very unlikely to ever make it above 60,000ft at a speed faster than 1000kt unless you own a fighter jet.

If you build nanosatellites or cubesats or do rocketry those limits are exeeded. For example NovAtel OEM-719 GPS has no COCOM limits.

Fortunately COCOM limits for GPS are not enforced. It's empty clause.

Re: Why radio receivers won’t tune 800-900 MHz

#144

Post by t0mas88 »

nabla9 wrote: post #142
t0mas88 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that the rules require GPS receivers not to work when above 60,000ft AND at a speed higher than 1000kt. Some manufacturers made that an OR, but that's not required. You're very very unlikely to ever make it above 60,000ft at a speed faster than 1000kt unless you own a fighter jet.

If you build nanosatellites or cubesats or do rocketry those limits are exeeded. For example NovAtel OEM-719 GPS has no COCOM limits. Fortunately COCOM limits for GPS are not enforced. It's empty clause.

Rockets that go above 60,000ft and at 1000kt are the case that this limit was designed for, they didn't want enemy ballistic missiles guided by GPS.

Of course that regulation is now useless because foreign receivers don't implement the limit and competing GNSS systems also don't have it. But at the time it was written this was a sensible restriction because it was a unique technology.

Re: Why radio receivers won’t tune 800-900 MHz

#145

Post by MertsA »

koyote wrote: post #94
proverbialbunny wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That and in 1999, if you were writing cracks, very few people were doing that in the demo scene at that point. The demo scene and the scene split up. In 1996 RNS started this change. By 1999 pre nets were already up, as well as top sites. I miss the 90s. I was 12 years old in 1999, but I started disassembling code when I was 8, so as you can imagine, people online thought I was an adult with all of illegal things I d…

I too miss those days... That being said, I feel like back then a most vulnerabilities were so simple due to lack of foresight/security that quite a few 12-year olds with a decent understanding of computing could perform them: I fondly remember an IIS bug which allowed you to basically 'cd' into any directory on the host machine and execute cmd.exe remotely. I believe it was as simple as the server not sanitising '..…

Even back in just 2012 I found one of our clients who had an ecommerce site came up with the "genius" idea of solving SQL injection by checking the unparsed URL for an apostrophe. Same self taught developer also decided to log the CC name, number, expiry, and CVV code for all orders instead of just storing the transaction ID from Authorize.net. There were 750,000 rows in that table when I found the SQL injection vuln.

Re: Why radio receivers won’t tune 800-900 MHz

#146

Post by niek_pas »

polote wrote: post #127
jcrawfordor wrote: post #27

Hi all, I am the author. I 1) have no idea how this made it to the top position, 2) now feel much guiltier about posting so infrequently, 3) apologize for the design of my blog being almost actively hostile to users, but then maybe that was the point?

> apologize for the design of my blog being almost actively hostile to users I edit a newsletter of blogs of HN and I can tell you that your design is not more hostile than most HN bloggers, don't worry you are fine

It’s not really “fine” it’s just “not quite as bad as some others”.

Re: Why radio receivers won’t tune 800-900 MHz

#147

Post by chkaloon »

jcrawfordor wrote: post #27

Hi all, I am the author. I 1) have no idea how this made it to the top position, 2) now feel much guiltier about posting so infrequently, 3) apologize for the design of my blog being almost actively hostile to users, but then maybe that was the point?

Just discovered your blog via HN. I love writers who keep this old history around and can really go deep into the rabbit holes. Thanks for that.

Re: Why radio receivers won’t tune 800-900 MHz

#148

Post by ThinkingGuy »

gscott wrote: post #104
breput wrote: post #10

I had (and probably still have) a Radio Shack Pro-2006 scanner from the late 80's. Even pre-Internet, instructions on how to bypass the cellular band block were easily found on Fidonet and local BBSes, and all it involved was removing a single diode. https://www.wentztech.com/radio/Equipment/Pro2006/pro2006mod... It was really a golden time for snoop...er..listening to cellular phones because they were so enormously…

I worked at Radio Shack and a customer came in, asked to see a particular hand held scanner. He moved around the buttons a few different ways and showed me it had a backdoor to listen to cellular calls. A few months later Radio Shack recalled that particular scanner. I had spent some time listening to calls and they were really boring. No girlfriends or drug deals, completely inane conversation.

I had a family member who used to listen in on phone calls on a modifed scanner (early 1990s). They commented that the conversations tended to follow a predictable pattern, correlating with basic human needs, as the day progressed.

Daytime: Money. People complaining about not having enough money, not being able to pay their bills (while talking on a $1000 cell phone and paying a per-minute charge).

Early evening: Food. "What are we going to eat tonight?" "Will you stop at the grocery store and pick up ___?" "What do you want for dinner?"

Night: Sex [use your imagination here]

Re: Why radio receivers won’t tune 800-900 MHz

#149

Post by jfalcon »

jcrawfordor wrote: post #78
jfalcon wrote: post #73

I think the OP's write up misses one very important piece of the puzzle: Politics. Newt Gingrich who was Speaker of the House at the time got embroiled in an incident that was recorded from a cell phone conversation. https://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1997/01/13/tape/index.shtml Now fast forward to a few years later with the Patriot Act and metadata controvery that Edward Snowden exposed... same shit, different day...

I did not know about the Newt Gingrich incident! That really adds some interest. There was definitely a lot of public attention to the issue at the time, and in some ways rightly so, but of course the resulting efforts were misdirected at a legislative fix. A point that I wanted to make in the article but I'm not sure I completely articulated was basically "this is what happens when Congress writes technical regulati…

Yeah.

Let's put it this way: OKI900's and all that were around before 1992. And that phone was favoured because you could easily reprogram the ESN/NAM/MIN for cloning as well as turn it into a scanner by turning on it's speaker and had control of the frequency. It was a modder's dream to hack on. But the same could be done with Motorola phones with a few more button presses.

That was 1992.

1997: AMPS system is waning against D-AMPS and even that is getting pressure from a new standard - GSM - which is also digital and ENCRYPTED. Newt gets caught and to show what a great prick him and Bill Clinton were, they passed a law that was obsolete before it was even passed into law.

https://www.wired.com/1997/11/ears-of-the-airwaves/

---

This is why the election system, process of creating lawmakers (congress) as well as judicial system is retarded. The time lag doesn't stop the flash pan crime trends nor does it do anything to improve the situation due to the abuse of absurd laws like this one. This law is rendered null and void by technology long before it was ever enacted...

Re: Why radio receivers won’t tune 800-900 MHz

#150

Post by dmitryminkovsky »

Lammy wrote: post #88
dmitryminkovsky wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Someone else was eating aluminum soda cans Huh?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pica_(disorder) maybe?

Yeah pica but can you eat an aluminum can and not die? Wouldn’t that certainly cause internal bleeding?
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