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Unread 22-08-2012, 14:19
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Re: Team 548 Einstein Statement

Quote:
Originally Posted by JesseK View Post
The assumption is a bit naive.

While I agree that 5Ghz wireless cards on battery-powered mission-critical laptops are far and few between (energy mongers...), any individual that tries to interfere from a driver's station laptop will probably not rely on a driver to do so. It's conceivable that the drive team wouldn't know it's happening. Most likely it'd go in a batch file or background script (rundll32.exe anyone?) that doesn't show up. Additionally, it could happen from the queue rather than on the field.

Now that an exploit is public knowledge, it's only a matter of creativity for how it's attempted to be abused. FIRST needs to find a solution for the root cause (sounds like they are). Turning wireless off for the laptops is a start.
It's hard to really enforce the zone around a field by just policing devices that are off.

You can't jam because if you do you probably will jam yourself unless you use a very well designed jamming system. Plus FIRST is a publicly visible corporation and you're taking your legal chances jamming like that. You can't count on the devices staying off after you look at them (if we assume no trust it's no problem to just turn it on or for an attacker to use resource kit tools to turn it back on). You can't even count on a spectrum analyzer and a near field antenna to find the devices because a device could be disabled when you look. You can't rely on denial of service detection because wireless by it's very nature is prone to short service disruptions which makes any channel disruptions less than a complete denial of service harder to detect. You can't even sort the process with a Bayesian filter because there are layers of complication and that requires some amount of repetition.

So in reality your choices to prevent future issues get quickly more difficult.

One could track communications losses per match and replay those that don't seem to be due to power issues to the radio (assuming we consider power issues to the radio to be a build quality issue). However, that does not fit with the current process that seems to be at work. Given the current process if an interloper can interfere and not get caught the match outcomes stand. So all it takes is someone with the knowledge and the willingness to absorb the risk.

Stick your head in on a DEFCON or Black Hat convention discussion some time. They'll pull stunts that obviously are pushing or breaking the law right in front of the authorities they know are watching them in the very same room. They aren't shy about it. It's going to be really hard to deny what they were doing if they get busted with a video of them doing it with an audience. At least they aren't concealing their efforts with what they know.

Last edited by techhelpbb : 22-08-2012 at 14:35.