Responsible disclosure practices

[virtuald]

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.