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"I’ll be honest I have always thought radio related stuff is a bit of a strange and boring hobby, the electronics side fine, but sitting and chatting to people

by w8rbt 10y ago

"I’ll be honest I have always thought radio related stuff is a bit of a strange and boring hobby, the electronics side fine, but sitting and chatting to people in a slow and often poor quality conversation didn’t really seem that interesting to me" --- You can send data over radio links and do other very interesting things... All without using a network! Just two nodes transmitting and receiving data via antennas at the speed of light. You don't have to talk at all. A lot of people don't get this when they think about radio. Radio is not just old, retired guys talking about health problems on VHF/UHF repeaters. Rather, it's a world-wide network, that has no infrastructure dependencies, transmitting data at the speed of light.

qwertyuiop924 10y ago
Yeah, it's full of cool stuff. Like old guys talking about emergency systems over VHF/UHF repeaters. And younger people, too.
mmaunder 10y ago
What many people don't realize is that right now, as you're reading this, you're probably using radio. Either wifi or 4G cellphone. Seems like an obvious statement, but RF engineers have done such a great job at making IP over the air reliable with 802.11X and 4G/LTE that we can forget about the fact that we're using it. The problem with this though is security. We tend to focus as security engineers too much on stuff riding on top of IP and forget about the underlying layer 1 protocols. And so that's for me what makes radio really interesting - especially dark corners that haven't been looked at for some time because they've been forgotten about.
- cortesoft 10y ago
  Nope, good old CAT6 for me ;)
  - TickleSteve 10y ago
    ...which also broadcasts RF. ...and can be quite easily sniffed with the right equipment.
- comboy 10y ago
  If you have proper security on a higher abstraction layer you don't care at all how the data gets transmitted, who can listen to it or modify it.
  - jonah 10y ago
    Note that on the Amateur frequencies, it's illegal to "Obfuscate" your transmissions. You can't even use coded language.
    - comboy 10y ago
      Didn't know that. Surely some people tried steganography? Or is there too much noise to try something like that? (and thanks for the antenna book recommendation)
      - pjc50 10y ago
        That would count as "obfuscation".
        comboy 10y ago
        It's really hard to prove steganography if you are hiding encrypted data (which looks like noise if it's properly encrypted)
  - mmaunder 10y ago
    Depends on what you're trying to protect. Seeing encrypted traffic flows at Tor entry and exit nodes for example can expose identity. Being able to monitor encrypted traffic on the wire or air can yield other useful and potentially compromising metadata.

by w8rbt 10y ago

qwertyuiop924 10y ago

Yeah, it's full of cool stuff. Like old guys talking about emergency systems over VHF/UHF repeaters. And younger people, too.

mmaunder 10y ago

What many people don't realize is that right now, as you're reading this, you're probably using radio. Either wifi or 4G cellphone. Seems like an obvious statement, but RF engineers have done such a great job at making IP over the air reliable with 802.11X and 4G/LTE that we can forget about the fact that we're using it. The problem with this though is security. We tend to focus as security engineers too much on stuff riding on top of IP and forget about the underlying layer 1 protocols. And so that's for me what makes radio really interesting - especially dark corners that haven't been looked at for some time because they've been forgotten about.

cortesoft 10y ago
Nope, good old CAT6 for me ;)
- TickleSteve 10y ago
  ...which also broadcasts RF. ...and can be quite easily sniffed with the right equipment.
comboy 10y ago
If you have proper security on a higher abstraction layer you don't care at all how the data gets transmitted, who can listen to it or modify it.
- jonah 10y ago
  Note that on the Amateur frequencies, it's illegal to "Obfuscate" your transmissions. You can't even use coded language.
  - comboy 10y ago
    Didn't know that. Surely some people tried steganography? Or is there too much noise to try something like that? (and thanks for the antenna book recommendation)
    - pjc50 10y ago
      That would count as "obfuscation".
      - comboy 10y ago
        It's really hard to prove steganography if you are hiding encrypted data (which looks like noise if it's properly encrypted)
- mmaunder 10y ago
  Depends on what you're trying to protect. Seeing encrypted traffic flows at Tor entry and exit nodes for example can expose identity. Being able to monitor encrypted traffic on the wire or air can yield other useful and potentially compromising metadata.