6 ms·
Am I alone in finding that these slides read like the ramblings of a looney?
by jasonvorhe 6y ago
Am I alone in finding that these slides read like the ramblings of a looney?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- tyingq 6y agoI'm sort of wondering about that "tap board" in the Snom 870 VoiP phone. Pictures here: http://buggedplanet.info/lost+found/20180323/ http://buggedplanet.info/lost+found/20180323/ I can't tell which parts are supposedly not part of the original phone. The 870 doesn't have bluetooth, but some very similar looking models do, which could account for the antenna on the board. Edit: See my follow up below. I'm now convinced this is a pretty complex tap inside the VoiP phone. No reason for a UHF transmitter to be inside a desk VoiP phone.
- xvf22 6y ago5th image bottom left you can see a little board with 3 black wires running off of it that doesn't look original. Could be a factory bodge but definitely looks a bit out of place.
- tyingq 6y agoAh, thanks. Though the slides talk about, for example, the Spartan 6, which is on the larger board and seems factory looking. That white connector on the little tap board appears to plug into J4 on this board: http://buggedplanet.info/lost+found/20180323/Images/18.jpg http://buggedplanet.info/lost+found/20180323/Images/18.jpg So that larger board would have to be part of the conspiracy. It's the one with the 2 FPGAs, NAND memory, board trace antenna, etc. That board is obviously custom fit for this specific phone, with passthrough cutouts for the LCD ribbon cable, mounting screws, etc. Edit: Actually, I can make out a chip in the top left of that larger board linked above that says SX1231 on it, which is a Semtech UHF transceiver. The QFN24 packaging matches as well. Small excerpt from the data sheet: "The SX1231 is a highly integrated RF transceiver capable of operation over a wide frequency range, including the 433, 868 and 915 MHz license-free ISM (Industry Scientific and Medical) frequency bands." Which is a pretty fishy chip to be in a desk VOIP phone. Interesting that someone might have made a custom fit, nicely silkscreened and barcode part-labeled bug for one specific model of voip phone.
- grandinj 6y agoUnless that model was expected to also function as some kind of push-to-talk device on a local radio network.
- Fnoord 6y ago> Which is a pretty fishy chip to be in a desk VOIP phone. Interesting that someone might have made a custom fit, nicely silkscreened and barcode part-labeled bug for one specific model of voip phone. I would imagine these bugs are designed by hardware engineers (a high skill job due to uniqueness of such trait), but not necessarily assembled by the same engineers (a lower skill job which requires different qualities). So, for example, a 'TAO station' would not necessarily contain all those engineers who designed the bugs, but it would have technicians who can install/implement them.
- jimmyswimmy 6y agoSuch a chip would enable the phone to act as a base station for a wireless headset. Snom make several varieties of such headsets. It is not necessarily proof of a "bug," could just be additional, perhaps never implemented, functionality for the phone.
- tyingq 6y agoDECT is ~1800MHz, Bluetooth is 2450MHz and this model doesn't have any sort of built in wireless.
- stordoff 6y agoThere are also five green wires running from the same board - it reminds me of an old console mod chip. It could be a patch job for a hardware bug, but it definitely looks odd.
- y04nn 6y agoThey replaced the entire keypad PCB, you can look at the 2 last pictures for comparison next to a normal keypad PCB. I'm very impressed by the complexity of the module.
- tyingq 6y agoYeah, it's interesting to me that it wasn't more hodge-podge and just hot glued onto a normal keypad PCB.
- dylan604 6y agoWhy? It's not the 1980s any more. The hot glued version would stick out like a sore thumb in today's electronics. Complex electronic components are very cheap and readily available.
- tyingq 6y agoBecause it would work on any Voip phone instead of just one specific make/model. FWIW, this one does have a daughterboard that is hot glued on, it's just the main board that's nicely done. I imagine very few people actually open their phone up
- _trampeltier 6y agoI guess, if they made an PCB for that phone model, it is not the only phone with such a bug at moment. If I had such a phone I would open an check it.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- wtfishackernews 6y agoOk, spook
- hjek 6y agoI got a weird vibe too.
- jonathanstrange 6y agoThat's probably because you don't realize that the speaker is Andy Müller-Maguhn and don't know the history and activities of CCC very well.
- mauricioc 6y agoExactly. Even if one doesn't know of him beforehand, this can be inferred from context: the emcee/herald refers to him as just "andy", suggesting he is a known figure in the context of the conference. A quick search for "andy ccc" reveals the rest of the information.
- kylebenzle 6y agoLol, found the CIA plant. But seriously, how much time/money is it worth to put to planting agents in online forums like this to both monitor and influence?