[FRC Blog] Einstein Report Released

[CalTran]

I can't help but feel like this report is somewhat backfiring on FIRST. While I do agree that it has been a vital process and do applaud them for releasing every detail about it, it appears to have created a rift in the FIRST community; splitting people into people who want to move past this at god speed, and a group who, and rightfully so, still attempting to cope with what they've faced. This second group, as exemplified by posts from some of the most esteemed members of the community, is a group most of us will never understand, and hopefully never will have to understand. A sweep of both Worlds and a CCA is, or at least should, be every teams goal, and a once in a lifetime event. To have been so close, and have everything seem to have been ripped away by a single person would be devastating to me. I would never be able to find it in my heart to forgive that individual.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that these teams will need time to cope with what happened, and that the rest of the FIRST community should give them ample time to heal at their own pace. When they're ready to forgive and maybe even forget, that is the time we can all look back at this.

[techhelpbb]

Originally Posted by CalTran

I can't help but feel like this report is somewhat backfiring on FIRST. While I do agree that it has been a vital process and do applaud them for releasing every detail about it, it appears to have created a rift in the FIRST community; splitting people into people who want to move past this at god speed, and a group who, and rightfully so, still attempting to cope with what they've faced. This second group, as exemplified by posts from some of the most esteemed members of the community, is a group most of us will never understand, and hopefully never will have to understand. A sweep of both Worlds and a CCA is, or at least should, be every teams goal, and a once in a lifetime event. To have been so close, and have everything seem to have been ripped away by a single person would be devastating to me. I would never be able to find it in my heart to forgive that individual.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that these teams will need time to cope with what happened, and that the rest of the FIRST community should give them ample time to heal at their own pace. When they're ready to forgive and maybe even forget, that is the time we can all look back at this.

I have a lot of goals with FIRST, but sweeping the competition merely in search of being the highest scoring team over and over is rarely one of them. It's welcome when it happens but I can't loose sight that this is about overcoming adversity. Those other awards at the end are not merely second, third, forth, etc.

I'm not sure how discussing moving forward harms the people that experienced this. There's nothing that can be done to undo this situation. Perhaps award them additional championship winners but that's beyond my ability to offer.

We do not have the logs to determine how far back that particular individual's attack vector was actually used (or whether they were the only exploiter of it). So the other people that almost certainly were denied beyond the Einstein teams will never know how or why.

We do not know if or when anyone used a deauth attack vector anywhere because again there are no logs.

We do not know how many times a robot made it to a championship or even highly ranked with a technical problem that might be caught with more frequent examination, better tools, or more time to look. How many of those teams were denied on the premise that the top level teams are more effectively mitigating those issues? Only to discover these issues remain at the top of the ranks. No disrespect can be placed on any team as this has been the nature of the competition for a good long time. Equal playing field and equal expectation of common issues.

I'm not rushing them, and I don't think anyone else is either, to forget their pain that would be totally unacceptable. I'm merely pointing out that their pain can't stop the world and their pain can't be a good reason to ignore the direction FIRST has clearly chosen for handling the identity of this team or it's members.

This is a tragic consequence, but the pain of tragedy is often the crushingly simple fact that you carry on and no matter how many times you talk about it will still be a tragedy.

If anyone can find a more suitable memorial for this I'll be happy to contribute but not at the expense of loosing the value of the report or subjecting future teams to a closely related situation.

[3747Mentor]

I think it is ok to be angry right now. I think it is ok to be straight livid. I think it is ok to be hurt. I think we can be mad for the Einstein teams and for ourselves. We all have skin in this game. We are coaches, players, supporters, and fans. Imagine the outrage if it was found out the Super Bowl was rigged. There would be congressional investigations. It would blow up the 24 hour news cycle. There may even be riots.

Well, this was our Super Bowl, and someone fixed it! Someone tampered with our biggest stage and there are calls to laugh it off and look at the bright side. It is way too soon to be upset with someone for being angry. I was not on Einstein and I am angry! I am angry for those who were immediately affected by this despicable act and I am angry for my team as well. We are competitors. We want to know that our hard work and effort goes into a competition that is truly played on a level field. This person took that away and I am not ready to get over it. There are still too many unanswered questions that need to be resolved. I want to know the whole story, and right now, only a handful of people do.

Einstein is not only important for those involved, but it is extremely important to all of us as well. I read that it is not about the robots, or even about winning, but I disagree. The robots are the vehicle to inspiration about STEM. Winning increases the impact. It is the motivation to improve ourselves. Professionals need to win contracts so they must find the best/most cost-effective solutions. Our goal is to win a competition. We don’t build a robot to do show and tell (the time for that is after the competition season is over) we build one to win Einstein. Competition drives us to improve. We can’t all win Einstein, so when we don’t, we look toward the teams that do make it to serve as our inspiration and motivation for improvement next season. We learn things from the teams involved and try them in the offseason. We use their excellence to make ourselves better. Those teams were cheated from an honest competition, and so were we.

I can see trouble in this thread for us. We are fighting amongst ourselves about what teams should be satisfied with and when they should be ready to move on. Arguments are getting personal and off the subject at hand. Are we really angry at each other, or are we angry at the person who lit this candle. I think this community might be better served by expressing our outrage at the person who did this..by airing it out. I see in this thread and the Sabotage thread that was just closed that we are starting to turn it against ourselves, and I believe it is all misplaced anger. Who are we really angry at?

I am a pilot, and I know from experience that a great flight can be ruined in the eyes of passengers with a bad landing. Bounce one on hard and passengers talk about the whole experience as if it was horrible. Unfortunately, for FRC, Einstein was 2012’s landing. Only time will let the season be put into perspective. Please stop telling people to look at the positives. They will later. If you are ready, good, we need people looking forward, but don’t rush the others. These arguments will only further hurt us, which is exactly what we don’t need right now.

[cgmv123]

See other thread: Einstein report powerpoint

[techhelpbb]

Originally Posted by 3747Mentor

I can see trouble in this thread for us. We are fighting amongst ourselves about what teams should be satisfied with and when they should be ready to move on. Arguments are getting personal and off the subject at hand. Are we really angry at each other, or are we angry at the person who lit this candle. I think this community might be better served by expressing our outrage at the person who did this..by airing it out. I see in this thread and the Sabotage thread that was just closed that we are starting to turn it against ourselves, and I believe it is all misplaced anger. Who are we really angry at?

I am sure that most of us are not angry at anyone. I surely am not angry. However, I am concerned that when winning becomes the only acceptable end that the value of the journey is lost. The simple reality is most of us will not win the championship in any given year.

Yes we do aspire to win. We do hope and we do the best we can to win.

Then again many of us will stop like these Einstein teams did and help each other out when it's not in our interest to make sure we win.

Unfortunately, there's clearly a much larger element of chance at work here than we seem to be able to accept as a community. I continue to see people speak of the difficulty of the best of the best teams to reach the highest echelon of competition.

I have been publicly quite pointed about the electrical issues that could impact robots since long before Einstein and long before this report. This report makes it clear that the best of our best still have problems that we've often assumed should not exist at that level of competition.

The combination of problems like the electrical issues from this report and the random uncertainty of the game designs themselves clearly makes it unpredictable that the qualities we think frame the best of the best are any assurance that they'll succeed. Hence the other awards.

The actions of this interloper aside. The uncertainty added to this environment beyond the game design is a fundamental problem that makes this all the more devastating for those most directly impacted. Surely it's an issue that adds more salt to these teams' wounds than is necessary. Even if they do everything just the same as they did this year there's no way they can be sure they'll place at that level again. FIRST's offer to promote them up to at least the venue automatically may only be slight help to them.

To use your example, we hope in the STEM fields when we compete on cost, quality and price we compete on a fair playing field. In the real world we often also compete against politics and tactics that exceed honest business.

I see a lot of frustration in this community which holds STEM values so dear to themselves that we have these uncertainties and lack of logs to find the proofs we so value. I do not think it'll turn to anger or hatred at random. Still I wouldn't fuel that fire with jokes because right now I'm sure some people still need the uneasy peace.

Clearly work needs to be done to limit the random impacts on the game play to those aspects which give opportunity for benefit to those that exhibit the traits we as a competition hold as the best example.

[Sean Raia]

It is rather sad, but it is my belief that this person will not reveal themself.

Anyone who is willing to interfere with robot communications to try and give their team the advantage is likely a coward. Cowards dont do whats right, they do whats easy.
Its fair to be upset with them...

FIRST has done an excellent job documenting their investigation and for that I thank them.

[KrazyCarl92]

Unfortunately, we've seen some of the most disrespectful posts ever in these forums directed at the victims of this incident. Although I can't claim to understand what the members of these teams are going through, I know for a fact that I would be distraught and disheartened for a while following the results of the Investigation if it were me. The last thing these teams need right now is for members of this community to be insensitive to their situation. They are some of the greatest teams comprised of some of the best people that FIRST has to offer.

I know if my hard work was ruined by someone else's wrong doing, I might question the time, effort, and commitment that was invested in it. Even though it wasn't my work that was destroyed, I am still upset, angry, and ashamed that someone in our community would do such a thing. Matters are made worse by the disrespect shown to these teams by their own community. The last thing we need is for some of the best people in our community to question the time, effort, and commitment they devote to FIRST. I fear that if disrespect continues, it could cause even more permanent damage.

Let us unite with support for those effected by the events on Einstein. Please be understanding and allow them ample time to recover from the tragedy, however long that may be.

As for the perpetrator, rather than vilify him/her, an attempt to understand what led him/her to do this would be more appropriate. As Dean Kamen says, "Society gets what it celebrates." What we got on Einstein was an unfair attack. While I know no one celebrates unfair attacks, there had to be something mistakenly celebrated to lead to this result. Speculatively, I would have to say competing at all costs was celebrated where it would be more appropriate to celebrate competing with gracious professionalism. We can't know for sure, so understanding the thoughts behind the actions will serve as a valuable resource to prevent these attempts in the future.

Thank you FIRST, the Einstein competitors, and our volunteers for your thorough investigation of the incident. It makes me proud to be a part of an organization that is willing to go to such lengths for the benefit of our community.

[Camren]

Quick not I'm sure someone has already brought this up but as a gamer I have made my skin thicker against hackers so that when I hear foul play was suspected I can positively say "then up your game". Is the FMS the best way to run robots I cant say it is because if someone hacks that box they can do what ever they want, they could change the score by adding a few penalties in or seize communication on a bot or even a whole alliance So what is the best system? I don't know. My guess would be something where we didn't have to rely on every single aspect of the game in one software. But that's where you get the "Then up your game" from.

[Sean Raia]

Originally Posted by Camren

Quick not I'm sure someone has already brought this up but as a gamer I have made my skin thicker against hackers so that when I hear foul play was suspected I can positively say "then up your game". Is the FMS the best way to run robots I cant say it is because if someone hacks that box they can do what ever they want, they could change the score by adding a few penalties in or seize communication on a bot or even a whole alliance So what is the best system? I don't know. My guess would be something where we didn't have to rely on every single aspect of the game in one software. But that's where you get the "Then up your game" from.

Reading this made me dizzy. Im sorry but id understand you better if you were to restructure that thought into something more coherent.
You cant relate this to video games, they are totally different in scale and impact.

[Steven Donow]

Originally Posted by Sean Raia

Reading this made me dizzy. Im sorry but id understand you better if you were to restructure that thought into something more coherent.
You cant relate this to video games, they are totally different in scale and impact.

I think he's saying that the FMS is one thing controlling everything (scoring, connection, etc...) and that it might be better to have everything be a separate system...but wouldn't all the systems integrated together just be the FMS!??!?!

Anyway, I think with what he's suggesting we wouldn't be able to have all the stuff we have now with the FMS twitter feed and whatnot.

[Ether]

Originally Posted by stevend1994

...FMS twitter feed...

This is slightly off-topic but still generally related...

I'm looking for an open channel to someone at FIRST who would be sympathetic to the suggestion that the Twitter data be logged locally to non-volatile storage so it could be made available after-the-fact in those cases where the feed is blocked at the event.

There are amateur statisticians and historians in the community who would love to have complete data for analysis.

[Greg McKaskle]

I don't believe the report says anything about the FMS being hacked, scores being changed, or robots being seized. There is no evidence those actions occurred on Einstein.

The report discusses how the FIRST staff performed some typical DoS attacks on the bridge and router to learn what the symptoms would look like. The report discusses that a bug was discovered in the field wifi components that allowed for a disruption of service. The FIRST staff then explored the various symptoms and the requirements for the bug to manifest. The bug allowed for service disruptions, but no foreign device joined any field access point.

Also, the exploit required no hacking skills. Hackers everywhere are cringing when this is referred to as a hack. The term hack never appears in the report. Sorry to be such a stickler for terminology, but inaccurate descriptions of what took place do not help matters. If there are parts of the report which need clarification, please ask rather than jump to conclusions.

Greg McKaskle

[Steven Donow]

Originally Posted by Greg McKaskle

I don't believe the report says anything about the FMS being hacked, scores being changed, or robots being seized. There is no evidence those actions occurred on Einstein.

The report discusses how the FIRST staff performed some typical DoS attacks on the bridge and router to learn what the symptoms would look like. The report discusses that a bug was discovered in the field wifi components that allowed for a disruption of service. The FIRST staff then explored the various symptoms and the requirements for the bug to manifest. The bug allowed for service disruptions, but no foreign device joined any field access point.

Also, the exploit required no hacking skills. Hackers everywhere are cringing when this is referred to as a hack. The term hack never appears in the report. Sorry to be such a stickler for terminology, but inaccurate descriptions of what took place do not help matters. If there are parts of the report which need clarification, please ask rather than jump to conclusions.

Greg McKaskle

The FMS was hacked in the way that 14 year old's Facebooks are "hacked" by their best friend who posted, "I smell" while they are both in the same room.

(I've been waiting for someone to post something like that so I can make the joke )

[techhelpbb]

Originally Posted by Greg McKaskle

I don't believe the report says anything about the FMS being hacked, scores being changed, or robots being seized. There is no evidence those actions occurred on Einstein.

The report discusses how the FIRST staff performed some typical DoS attacks on the bridge and router to learn what the symptoms would look like. The report discusses that a bug was discovered in the field wifi components that allowed for a disruption of service. The FIRST staff then explored the various symptoms and the requirements for the bug to manifest. The bug allowed for service disruptions, but no foreign device joined any field access point.

Also, the exploit required no hacking skills. Hackers everywhere are cringing when this is referred to as a hack. The term hack never appears in the report. Sorry to be such a stickler for terminology, but inaccurate descriptions of what took place do not help matters. If there are parts of the report which need clarification, please ask rather than jump to conclusions.

Greg McKaskle

There are 2 vectors in that report.

The confirmed vector was the one that needed very little beyond a phone. They found someone that admitted to that on Einstein.

The other vector (which does work but we have no evidence either way it was used) was deauth and generally that one is described on hack a day in October 2011.

As a person that works in computer security I know most big bad 'hackers' people find are just exploiting the much more time consuming efforts of others.

In this person's case it is more social engineering. They must have tested this before they reported it. The manipulation is in reporting it in such a way we will not be able to find out how and when that was done before.

Course they may not have realized that there were insufficient logs stored on the field servers so that was a gamble.

Still there is no evidence presented to support the idea that this person intended to influence the Einstein matches in a particular direction (who got hit was just a function of proving it worked at all).

The trick with the phone wouldn't have worked on at least 2 of the robots because those 2 had the B version of the D-Link AP on them at the time. Without logs we have no way of knowing whether the person with the phone knew that those 2 teams had that B version AP and ignored them in their effort. So there's no reason to suspect that this person knew anything more than this trick they pulled worked before somewhere, somehow.

Keeping in mind that this trick with the phone also requires the Cisco field AP to have a specific version of firmware the only practical place to test that without heavy reverse engineering would be on a field.

[Greg McKaskle]

Does the report say that they reported it? I believe it says they admitted it.

I think the appropriate place for security experts to report vulnerabilities would be directly to FIRST staff. If you have a knack for hacking, social or otherwise, do the right thing -- wear the white hat.

Greg McKaskle