NEW 2009 Control System Released

[JesseK]

Originally Posted by Justin

Hi Everyone,

Knowing the FIRST community as I do I'm afraid this post might ruffle some feathers. However in the whole of this conversation, or in an of the documents, I haven't seen any talk of the security employed on the WiFi network that team's robots will now rely on. Is there any encryption whether it be WPA or proprietary from NI? Please note that I am NOT advocating anything malicious during a match but I can think of ways that the WiFi/ethernet/IP(?) nature of the control system could be exploited. Now I recognize that those in FIRST practice gracious professionalism and I would not presume to suggest that anyone involved with FIRST would attempt an exploit. However as we are all reminded to often not everyone in the world lives by the FIRST creed. I think a little prudence would be the responsible course for FIRST and NI in this case.

Can anyone speak to this?

Thanks,

Justin

P.S. I see the post a few posts up now and that is disturbing. Clearly this will have to be addressed, with respects to my thread any ideas what shape such security might likely take?

The FIRST rep that was at the mentor discussion today said that FIRST is outsourcing this issue in order to ensure they get an expert on the matter. They have to ensure security while also ensuring 24 teams (aka Atlanta setup) are able to be on the same network with equal bandwidth. Essentially, if they gave out how they were deciding to ensure security, someone somewhere would be that much closer to hacking into it. He also implied that FIRST would have detection methods and mechanisms in place to figure out the source of any tampering.