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If NSA Can Hack WiFi 8 Miles Out – Implications for Commercial Use

6 points by giardini 6y ago

https://www.ubergizmo.com/2013/12/the-nsa-has-a-device-that-supposed-can-hack-your-wifi-from-8-miles-away/ Assume that the NSA, as they claim, can hack wifi 8 mile out. Then it must be possible for a network of enhanced wifi routers to act as a wide-area network similar to now-defunct Metricom's Ricochet system except far more robust, distributed and less costly. Such a network, by reducing the role of local ISPs, could reduce unwanted monitoring (by NSA and others). I am asking for suggestions about software/hardware enhanced stacks for such a "New and Freer Internet"?

eberkund 6y ago
I don't know about 8 miles, but you can greatly extend your WiFi range with an external WiFi antenna and a large dish.
mytailorisrich 6y ago
If you have the correct antennas and possibly amplifiers on both ends you can established a Wifi link over hundreds of miles (if you have line of sight). Basically, if you can see the other device you want to communicate with at building level with your eyes then it's not too difficult to establish a Wifi link with it using off the shelf parts. On the other hand, intercepting a 'normal' Wifi signal (e.g. me browsing HN at home using omni antennas and standard Tx power) from 8 miles away is quite a feat and I doubt that they can do that at will. Probably only in specific scenarios (e.g. line of sight in a not too noisy environment), if at all.
- omarchowdhury 6y ago
  > If you have the correct antennas and possibly amplifiers on both ends you can established a Wifi link over hundreds of miles (if you have line of sight). Basically, if you can see the other device you want to communicate with at building level with your eyes then it's not too difficult to establish a Wifi link with it using off the shelf parts. Any resources you can share to do this?
  - nonamenoslogan 6y ago
    I can't speak to hundreds of miles, but I built a Wifi bridge that went about 1.75 miles across a cow pasture with center-pivot sprinklers using a pair of WRT-54G routers, DD-WRT, and some yagi/panel antennas from Amazon about 10 years ago. Total price was under $300 and speeds of 11mb were all we went for as it was just feeding a PC for browsing and time-card punches in a shop across the pasture from the office. It ran happily for nearly 6 years before being replaced with a packaged kit of antennas and POE injectors that advertised 54mb over 2-3 miles seamlessly for around the same price. If you had a pile of old 802.11b gear and the time and gumption, I'd think you could build something like this for sub-$50 at this point.
Zenst 6y ago
8 miles away, if cities, now that would be impressive beyond belief. 8 miles away, small town on the side of a hill, sure. Though a drone 8 miles up, would we see or hear that? Also are the NSA as curtailed about legal transmit power as as mear citizens? As being able to boost transmit power, yes 8 miles reasonably focused and drowning out everybody else, would not be subtle. Now when they can do it with low-orbit satellites, an array of those beamforming - oh it maybe fantasy, but gets me onto one safeguard. Should wifi have radio latency checks? By that, ringfence via radio latency how far away somebody can connect - even if they can see or transmit from 8 miles away, if you had protection that ignored anything over 20 meters away, you would totally be able to lock those connections down. That would need to be at chipset level, though with a good resolution ping, you could augment security and with a more granular ping, would be able to tell how far away any connected wifi device is. So technically possible with hardware already and just a software feature that could be added and remove anybody over a certain distance from even holding a connection upon the network over wifi.
- rl3 6y ago
  >Now when they can do it with low-orbit satellites ... Some of the better speculation I've come across suggests American ELINT satellites have deployed antenna spans measuring hundreds of feet. That might explain why grabbing cellular transmissions right out of the air without requiring terrestrial resources has been a thing for at least a couple decades now. When you have virtually unlimited budget, you can do a lot of things thought previously impossible.
duxup 6y ago
I think with all technical things there's a lot of context we don't know. I don't doubt it could be done in some specific situations ... not so much 8 miles in other situations. No doubt a contractor or someone would be happy to take the development money for '8 miles' ;)
8bitsrule 6y ago
Depends on how many people are micro-waving (at 2.4 GHz) their supper at the time.

6 points by giardini 6y ago

eberkund 6y ago

I don't know about 8 miles, but you can greatly extend your WiFi range with an external WiFi antenna and a large dish.

mytailorisrich 6y ago

If you have the correct antennas and possibly amplifiers on both ends you can established a Wifi link over hundreds of miles (if you have line of sight). Basically, if you can see the other device you want to communicate with at building level with your eyes then it's not too difficult to establish a Wifi link with it using off the shelf parts. On the other hand, intercepting a 'normal' Wifi signal (e.g. me browsing HN at home using omni antennas and standard Tx power) from 8 miles away is quite a feat and I doubt that they can do that at will. Probably only in specific scenarios (e.g. line of sight in a not too noisy environment), if at all.

omarchowdhury 6y ago
> If you have the correct antennas and possibly amplifiers on both ends you can established a Wifi link over hundreds of miles (if you have line of sight). Basically, if you can see the other device you want to communicate with at building level with your eyes then it's not too difficult to establish a Wifi link with it using off the shelf parts. Any resources you can share to do this?
- nonamenoslogan 6y ago
  I can't speak to hundreds of miles, but I built a Wifi bridge that went about 1.75 miles across a cow pasture with center-pivot sprinklers using a pair of WRT-54G routers, DD-WRT, and some yagi/panel antennas from Amazon about 10 years ago. Total price was under $300 and speeds of 11mb were all we went for as it was just feeding a PC for browsing and time-card punches in a shop across the pasture from the office. It ran happily for nearly 6 years before being replaced with a packaged kit of antennas and POE injectors that advertised 54mb over 2-3 miles seamlessly for around the same price. If you had a pile of old 802.11b gear and the time and gumption, I'd think you could build something like this for sub-$50 at this point.

Zenst 6y ago

8 miles away, if cities, now that would be impressive beyond belief. 8 miles away, small town on the side of a hill, sure. Though a drone 8 miles up, would we see or hear that? Also are the NSA as curtailed about legal transmit power as as mear citizens? As being able to boost transmit power, yes 8 miles reasonably focused and drowning out everybody else, would not be subtle. Now when they can do it with low-orbit satellites, an array of those beamforming - oh it maybe fantasy, but gets me onto one safeguard. Should wifi have radio latency checks? By that, ringfence via radio latency how far away somebody can connect - even if they can see or transmit from 8 miles away, if you had protection that ignored anything over 20 meters away, you would totally be able to lock those connections down. That would need to be at chipset level, though with a good resolution ping, you could augment security and with a more granular ping, would be able to tell how far away any connected wifi device is. So technically possible with hardware already and just a software feature that could be added and remove anybody over a certain distance from even holding a connection upon the network over wifi.

rl3 6y ago
>Now when they can do it with low-orbit satellites ... Some of the better speculation I've come across suggests American ELINT satellites have deployed antenna spans measuring hundreds of feet. That might explain why grabbing cellular transmissions right out of the air without requiring terrestrial resources has been a thing for at least a couple decades now. When you have virtually unlimited budget, you can do a lot of things thought previously impossible.

duxup 6y ago

I think with all technical things there's a lot of context we don't know. I don't doubt it could be done in some specific situations ... not so much 8 miles in other situations. No doubt a contractor or someone would be happy to take the development money for '8 miles' ;)

8bitsrule 6y ago

Depends on how many people are micro-waving (at 2.4 GHz) their supper at the time.