> Radio - CB/ham/amateur radio in particular - requires no infrastructure and is far more expensive to block than the internet.
Very true in peace time, but it's in clear and easily traceable which makes it dangerous in war time; also there's little development in encryption over HAM/CB since it's illegal pretty much everywhere; encryption devices can be added externally, although for the above reason they're not immediately available at the next radio shop.
Moreover, nowadays military forces can pinpoint immediately the source of a rogue transmission by measuring the phase delay of a signal on multiple fixed antennas, that is, they don't have to waste time while pointing directional antennas around to find the direction; therefore you push the PTT and after a fraction of second they have your location on the map. Now I'm not sure the Russians have this infrastructure in place in Ukraine, but they could if they wanted.
Correct me if I'm wrong but open (read: unencrypted) radio signals across public airways are not subject to any sort of protection under the law. Point being, the police could do this legally.
It's interesting that the Russians aren't using encrypted comms. This is pretty standard across most militaries - It makes me wonder what's going on that would make unencrypted communication the norm.
I also find it strange that Russian soldiers are allowed to bring their personal phones into the field... I know the United States military allows it as well, but I thought they were the exception as it's a huge security risk.
I'm part of a subreddit that reads defence reports and tries to keep up with "credible" news about the War in Ukraine. A newly released report by RUSI (The Royal United Services Institute, the world’s oldest defence and security think tank) says that Russians are now "near real time" decrypting 256-bit Motorola radio communications by Ukrainian forces.
Here is the relevant passage.
Ukrainian officers recalled one incident in which the Russian headquarters gave pre-emptive warning to its units of an artillery strike based on Ukrainian troops calling in a fire mission. The Ukrainian troops were communicating with Motorola radios with 256-bit encryption, but it appeared that the Russians were able to capture and decrypt these transmissions in near real time. The most likely system for such functions is the Torn-MDM. (57)
They cite two interviews with Ukrainian military personnel and their own analysis of the system as a source:
57. Technical assessment of Torn-MDM conducted in Ukraine, June 2022
Some are saying this is impossible, that near real time decryption of 256-bit encryption is not possible.
I'm not an expert, so I'm punting over to the cryptographers here at HN. Could this be? Is it possible/feasible to do battlefield decryption of 256-bit radio encryption?
I don't know the particular model of the Motorola radio they are referring to.
Here is the report in question. Page 23 https://static.rusi.org/403-SR-Russian-Tactics-web-final.pdf
This is really cool. The article mentions that encryption is illegal over these radio frequencies, but why is that? Are people actively detecting encrypted data?
It would be cool to experiment with these radios but have it all communicate using TLS or something.
I've always thought this problem was interesting and it's one of the reasons it's a real shame that amateur radio doesn't allow encrypted communications. I get that you can still do it anyways if you're willing to skirt an unjust law in the name of a higher code of ethics, but it would be handy to have it be a normal occurrence and get some herd immunity out of it.
Of course I'm also aware it's not nearly that simple, that if ham bands allowed lots of discrete encrypted communication they'd just get filled up with commercial and business users taking advantage of the privacy and snatching up free bandwidth. I'm not a genius by a long shot, but I have to wonder if there's some solution for this. Maybe some kind of open-source encrypted radio modem which operates in ham or underutilized radio bands that someone could design and put out on a torrent server for people in these situations to access and build. It would be highly illegal to possess one, but what about just designing it? People using it in desperate situations under authoritarian regimes would likely already be operating outside the law.
I’m surprised this hasn’t happened already, or isn’t more widely being done.
One thing that I didn’t see in the article is a discussion around authentication of the radio broadcast. I don’t know anything about radio encryption, but I assume that like other forms of encryption, the receiver is able to authenticate the source. This seems like something anyone would want, like TLS for radio.
I get the desire for transparency, but that should that trump the need for trusted radio transmissions?
Also, it’s interesting to see discussion of the opposite issue around encryption. Where in this case it’s the gov’t being asked to be open, as opposed to law enforcement’s desire to have backdoors in our devices.
If the transmission was encrypted, it would have also been illegal on the amateur bands [1]. This isn't 90s crypto-war paranoia; the concern about encryption is that if transmissions on the amateur bands are allowed to be obscured, unscrupulous individuals (say, taxi companies), could flood the amateur bands with commercial transmissions rather than pay for a share of the commercial bands. This goes against the open, public intent behind amateur bands, and takes away bandwidth from amateur users (read: the public, you and me). The FCC is looking out for us.
Radio spectrum is a finite resource. If you look at a chart [2] of US Frequency allocations, amateur radio operators have been given the right to transmit on a relatively massive fraction of the physically available spectrum. It would easily be worth billions if it were commercial. Instead, due to the quirks of history, the public has been given wondrous access to the airwaves. It's a public resource, like a park, and it's the Grand Canyon, it's Yellowstone, it's Yosemite. As hackers we have to respect it, and we have to protect it by using it responsibly. We need to get licensed, and we need to educate others so we can avoid a tragedy of the commons. Illegal transmissions are like litter. If we don't follow the rules and treat the amateur spectrum well, the FCC could plausibly decide to auction it off. It's not like there isn't pressure to do so. Demonstrating a DIY BTS is very cool, but at least have the decency to test it in a faraday cage. Don't litter in my park.
Amateur radio is fun, and it's one of the original electronics hacker activities. Get licensed, assemble a few simple electronic components, and talk to someone else (often like you), potentially thousands of miles away. All without reliance on any extant communications infrastructure. How cool is that? It's a tremendous way to learn about physics and electronics, and there are many exciting things happening with digital transmissions. It's a magical thing when you hear a foreign voice coming from your speaker, carried from a transmitter a continent away. Learn, build, and have (responsible) fun in the park!
> In general, amateur radio transmissions ought to be open and unencrypted -- the equivalent of GPL or public domain.
What are your reasons for that assertion?
Imagine if someone suggested that all noncommercial messages over Wifi should be unencrypted and public domain, because it's a shared resource. They'd be laughed out of the room.
If your concern is about identifying abusers of shared spectrum then simply require that all messages be prefixed with the cleartext/speech sending station code.
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