Team 548 Einstein Statement

[Siri]

Originally Posted by DampRobot

Second, was there institutional knowledge of this security hole?...

While you bring up good points, are you underestimating how difficult this was to purposefully discover and/or how lucky you'd have to be to find it? I honestly don't know, but as I understand it the Cisco firmware with the hole only implemented in Week 4, and even then only manifest in one of the D-Link revisions. While FIRST tested the new firmware thoroughly for the issue it was meant to address, it's not so surprising they didn't test for FCA (page 7). Conceding (as the wireless experts did) that it's not an obvious issue to test for, I'd be somewhat surprised if FIRST officials managed to trip on it in the intervening weeks. Granted, this definitely isn't my area of expertise.

I missed any implication of a second person in the Report. Where are you referring?

Originally Posted by EricH

You are forgetting one thing: T14 ONLY addresses Ref interaction! So your interpretation is that the head ref is the only person on the field that questions can be asked of. Have you or any member of your drive team asked a field resetter anything? How about discussing why your robot isn't connecting with the FTA or FTAA? I'm so sorry, but by your interpretation, you just did something illegal. Move along, you can't discuss that with that person.

I certainly don't take T14 to be the only allowable interaction (having talked to enough FTAs in my day), but it is the only guaranteed interaction. While I've never done it on Einstein, I head refs--even busy ones--seem listen to polite students in the box. I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a ref that wouldn't listen twice to "I know what's wrong; please let me show you how anyone in the stadium can shut down any robot on this field". As I understand it, the demonstration is rather quick (pull up the network list and show you can send a client authorization). If so, the student could show this directly to the ref for added clout.

I know what's done is done, but hopefully an earnest examination will help anyone thinking of doing something like this in the future. No matter how helpless you feel thinking someone else is targeting your team, there are always other ways. In fact, you can't count on anyone even listening to you, much less getting a replay, if you try to interfere yourself. (Not that this is the key reason against interference.)