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Unread 16-07-2012, 11:23
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Re: [FRC Blog] Einstein Report Released

Quote:
Originally Posted by Camren View Post
Ummm anyone else find that the Einstein FMS used at the prior events Chesapeake Regional, Virginia Regional, Midwest Regional and 10,000 Lakes Regional weren't perfect? Team 3081 had to restart their router going into every elimination match at 10k lakes. Other than that I thought the investigation report was carried through well.
As I've pointed out before in this topic. It's possible that the power supply that feeds the AP comes up in such a way that causes the router to boot in a state that is not useful.

It's the sort of thing that would depend on what the status of the charge is in the capacitors in the system when you power up. Also it would depend on having a AP a little more sensitive than the median.

I tested a few robots at off season events with tiny oscilloscopes attached to them on the field. Sometimes during a power up it takes a little longer to get to regulation voltage than at other times (we're talking milliseconds max here not seconds).

So it's hard to say that every time you had to reboot an AP it was locked up by a bad processor reset or the exploit. Unfortunately as others have pointed out there are good indicators of the exploit behavior but it wasn't tracked throughout the season.

Hard to say how much was interloper, how much was component malfunction and how much build related failure.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Nick Lawrence View Post
I had to wait a few days to post as some portions of this report have disgusted me beyond belief. I won't comment on that.

I am happy to see that a white paper is going to come out thoroughly describing how the FMS works. I applaud FIRST for this.

What really burns in my mind right now is when was this bug discovered? More importantly, how was it tested before used on Einstein? (If it happened at champs in this team's division, could that division have been different, if the attack was used there?) I saw some "unexplained" complete control losses at champs this year that could (not saying 100% for sure, not even 1% for sure,) be attributed to a FCA issue.

I really also would love to hear from the team this individual was from. It would be better for them in the long run, rather than people thinking the whole team is made up of "cheating individuals" when I'm pretty sure that isn't the case.

-Nick
This has come up over and over.

If one assumes that more than one person was aware of the exploit.

There is no assurance that the other people that know are on the team associated with the individual.

In fact the deauth attack (there are 2 issues in the report) could easily have been exploited by anyone anywhere. All you'd have to do is Google it.

So no it's not logical to assume the team had to have known or was the only possible exploiter.

More importantly the individual didn't need to do anything really all that unusual besides be too aggressive attempting to connect to the network.

That's too easy for anyone, even a spectator, to do in mere curiosity.

Once we assume that more than just this individual might be involved who is to say that we can trust that someone somewhere won't do something unfortunate to the individual as it's really the same problem:

1. Everyone who keeps trying to find out is doing something FIRST may not be comfortable with.
2. When someone does find out we don't know how they'll behave.
3. Once the cat is out of the bag we won't know the extent or duration of the consequences metered out to this person.

By actively seeking out this person we are very much doing what we all indicated is bad behavior on their part.

Worse as a community (just like this person's team) we'd take the hit for anyone that went overboard.

We're setting ourselves up for a vicious cycle.

Last edited by techhelpbb : 16-07-2012 at 11:39.
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