[StevenB]

The attacker's motives don't strike me as dark and mysterious. The report specifically states that the individual contacted FIRST and explained what they had done. If they hadn't, we would probably still be speculating. Were their actions in St. Louis wrong, foolish, and harmful? Yes. But I hesitate to say they were malicious.

Imagine this: You're sitting in the stands at your regional, watching a match, and just out of curiosity, you try to connect to the FMS from your phone. The phone asks for the WPA key. "Of course," you think to yourself and give up on this little experiment. But you punch in a random password anyway, and to your horror, the robot on the field suddenly stops.

You try to tell the FTA, but he brushes you off. Lots of robots die for lots of reasons, and there's absolutely no reason for a failed authentication attempt to take out a connection.

Now what?

From reading ChiefDelphi, it's clear to you that this is probably happening all over the country. FIRST HQ seems to be ignoring the control system issues and is blaming the teams instead, and it makes you angry. (Go back and read some threads from March - this sentiment abounds!) Championships are going to be a mess. It's almost certain that others are going to discover the issue, and they will probably use it in a malicious way to gain an advantage in the competition.

So, in anger and wannabe-heroism, you do the only thing you can think of to get FIRST to listen...

Was this the wrong way to address the issue? Absolutely. But given the openness, sincerity, and determination we've seen from FIRST in recent months, I wonder if the attacker succeeded.

This investigation uncovered a treasure trove of software bugs and electromechanical faults, and I hope we will all build better robots next year because of it. It showed that problems, both incredibly complex and completely stupid, will happen to all of us. Major thanks to FIRST for such a thorough investigation, and I'm looking forward to the improvements next season!