Possible FLR Hacking?

[jtdowney]

Originally Posted by Tuba4

Don't discount the idea of someone remotely controlling a robot by iPhone /iPad. There are two free iOS apps called DSLite and IAMDriver which CAN drive a robot. It is not out of the question.

DSLite would still require the iPhone to have the wireless key and iAMdriver only works if you're using the iAMdriver control system instead of the cRIO.

Originally Posted by sparrowkc

WPA2 security, as used by FIRST, has no known weaknesses, meaning that there no methods better than brute force for obtaining a key. WEP has critical weaknesses which can be exploited by the software you mention, but FIRST doesn't use WEP, nor should anybody else.

Not true, within the last year a vulnerability was disconvered in the WPA2 spec known as Hole196. However it doesn't help in finding the key only helps you do nefarious things once you know it.

Also there is really no need to brute force the key, it would be far easier to just take the pieces of paper that have the wireless keys written on them. Many of the competitions I've been at teams will leave the paper they're given with the key just laying around their pit. In the frantic pace of the event no one would likely notice if it went missing.

All of that being said I have significant doubts that there was a malicious person at FLR remotely controlling robots. I've seen many robots do weird things over the years due to low batteries, bad wiring, faulty programming, etc. We build very complex machines and when they don't function as expected it can be frustrating. However there should be a lot of thought given before anyone makes accusations of cheating.