View Single Post
  #2   Spotlight this post!  
Unread 12-04-2015, 10:32
virtuald's Avatar
virtuald virtuald is offline
RobotPy Guy
AKA: Dustin Spicuzza
FRC #1418 (), FRC #1973, FRC #4796, FRC #6367 ()
Team Role: Mentor
 
Join Date: Dec 2008
Rookie Year: 2003
Location: Boston, MA
Posts: 1,033
virtuald has a brilliant futurevirtuald has a brilliant futurevirtuald has a brilliant futurevirtuald has a brilliant futurevirtuald has a brilliant futurevirtuald has a brilliant futurevirtuald has a brilliant futurevirtuald has a brilliant futurevirtuald has a brilliant futurevirtuald has a brilliant futurevirtuald has a brilliant future
Re: Responsible disclosure practices

It's worth noting that the FRC control system is *not* designed for security. As far as I've seen, none of the communications control protocols are encrypted or authenticated in any way shape or form. The roboRIO by default ships with blank passwords, and anonymous FTP is enabled.

For example, without trying actually trying it, I'm 100% sure that a robot could enable itself without the FMS directing it to do so. Some unscrupulous team could definitely (in theory) enable itself before autonomous mode started, for example. But, given that humans are refereeing the competition, it seems likely that a cheat in that manner would get caught.

As far as security on the field, I believe the thing keeping teams on separate networks from each other is mostly enforced at the router level. Most cheating that could happen here would probably be noticed by someone somewhere, and be difficult to get away with.

With that said, if you have a concern, I would recommend contacting one of the NI people on this forum as a first stop, or find Kevin O Connor's email at FIRST.
__________________
Maintainer of RobotPy - Python for FRC
Creator of pyfrc (Robot Simulator + utilities for Python) and pynetworktables/pynetworktables2js (NetworkTables for Python & Javascript)

2017 Season: Teams #1973, #4796, #6369
Team #1418 (remote mentor): Newton Quarterfinalists, 2016 Chesapeake District Champion, 2x Innovation in Control award, 2x district event winner
Team #1418: 2015 DC Regional Innovation In Control Award, #2 seed; 2014 VA Industrial Design Award; 2014 Finalists in DC & VA
Team #2423: 2012 & 2013 Boston Regional Innovation in Control Award


Resources: FIRSTWiki (relaunched!) | My Software Stuff