Team 548 Einstein Statement

[DMetalKong]

As far as I understand the extent of the problems, and as far as I understand the OSI model, the attacks that people are talking about are mostly happening on the network layer, which means that they would have to be resolved on the network layer or above. Since I doubt we will be moving away from 802.11 as the physical layer, and since I doubt we will be messing with MAC addressing and whatnot on the data link layer, this means that issues would have to be resolved at the network layer*.

So, possible solution time: what if FIRST developed custom firmware for the routers that would require a handshake using PKI in addition to the normal procedures for connecting to the field AP? Give every team a SD card or flash drive that contains a signed public-private keypair belonging to the team, as well as the certificate for the field APs. As long as every team's private key remains private, this would ensure that any request to connect to the field by a team would be irrevocably linked to that specific team (so no posing as team XXX trying to disrupt field communications), and any request to connect to the field that is not signed could safely be ignored. MITM should be mitigated in this scenario as well. Denial-of-service or other types of jamming would be possible, but I am assuming they would be more easily detected (because blocking out a user's communication entirely should require more bandwidth than simply impersonating them (I think? Even the FCA attack described did not stop communications on the physical layer, it only made the router ignore a valid connection attempt))*.

* I am by no means an expert, I am just spouting off from my understanding of a couple of networking courses in school.