There's a free cool app called "plane finder" on iOS and Android that shows you where all the planes are. I think the iOS version has "augmented reality" that lets you snap a pic with your cam and shows you the info.
First response on showing it to a couple acquaintances in a coffee shop: "That's scary! Where did you get that, the CIA? Are you on a terrorist watch list?"
Me: "They're already in the air. What am I going to do, jump up and grab them?"
Security through obscurity is popular
-- ----Android NewsGroup Reader---- http://usenet.sinaapp.com/
You can get it on a plain ol' regular computer too.
It's fun to look up and see the plane going by.
-- Grizzly H.
Note that you'll never find AF-1 on there (and doubtfully many military flights). Someone thinks obscurity is important for security.
Den tirsdag den 2. februar 2016 kl. 19.55.35 UTC+1 skrev krw:
the was a documentary about Bush's thanksgiving visit to Iraq the AF1 transponder pretending to be a Citation with some other call sign and them nearly aborting when some other plane got close enough that they might have questioned why that Citation was so big ;)
-Lasse
Not much obscurity there. The data comes from the plane transponders, which transmit the location and aircraft registration numbers in clear. Its relatively simple to build a receiver to decode that data. Just exactly why everyone thought that was a good idea is beyond me.
The only obscurity in the 'net display is that its delayed by at least several minutes. Not terribly useful to someone aiming a missile.
Tradeoffs.
If you do a simple obscuration of the data, it won't be long until somebody figures out how to un-obscure it, and you have no security left.
If you do a strong encryption of the data, you have to first select an encryption standard that you believe will remain adequately secure for the lifetime of the system (or, at least, the time between major upgrades and "new generation" switchover). You have to arrange to build the system - which means building transmitters for all of the aircraft, and receiver/decryption systems for the ground stations. You have to figure out how to handle key distribution, and authentication (so that one aircraft cannot "spoof" another). You have to figure out whether individual aircraft are going to be allowed to decrypt each others' transmissions. You have to make sure that the decryption units are never stolen or "cracked" (i.e. so that the decryption keys never leak out). You have to figure out how to share the security of the system with numerous foreign governments that you don't necessarily trust. You have to figure out how to pay for it all.
And, you have to deal with the fact that encrypting the data, significantly raises the odds that the data will be "lost" whenever the signal quality is less than wonderful. Equipment failures aloft will be more likely to cause the transmissions to be incorrect or unreadable. Reliability of the system will suffer.
Take a look at the history of encryption technologies for cellphone calls (an infrastructure which "turns over" a lot faster than air transportation infrastructure) and you'll see that it's a hard problem.
Unless somebody can make a solid case that encrypting plane transponder transmissions will provide benefits well in excess of the (large) costs and risks of doing so, I don't expect it will happen.
Except, of course, for the military... where IFF security makes a great deal of sense, and where they do throw large amounts of encryption and signal security at the problem.
No. You only need encryption that protects the useful life of the data.
In the case of aircraft, that's not a very long time. Certainly much shorter than the lifetime of the system. It's such a short time that we accept a system that has no encryption, in fact.
There may be attack vectors that can use historical data, but those are defended by other means, so again, encryption is not needed.
Clifford Heath
My point was that if somebody breaks the encryption *system*, it could reduce the protection level of *subsequent* data to effectively zero.
For example, if you were to use a public/private key system with a single private RSA key, and somebody managed to calculate the original key factors, they could then calculate the private key. Once the reverse-engineered key was distribute across the net, all subsequent encrypted transponder signals could be decrypted immediately by anyone with the reverse-engineered key.
Part of the difficulty is that the *desired* use of the system is one which can operate in real time. The legitimate users of the transmissions need to be able to get to the data quickly and reliably. That puts some serious limitations on how difficult and lengthy the decryption process could be, and how (and when) keys could be changed in the event of a compromise.
And, if somebody breaks the system even further... for example, figuring out a really fast way to factor... then changing keys would no longer restore security to the system.
Yes, I know how cryptography works.
But you 'only' need to encrypt the data so that it takes say 10 minutes to break it on any reasonably powerful system. That is long enough to prevent the data being useful for most malign purposes. And its a lot easier to do that than a strong encryption which needs to resist attack for 'ever', like say bank accounts. Even most rolling-code / key exchange systems like garage door openers can achieve that level.
On a sunny day (Tue, 2 Feb 2016 15:19:47 -0800) it happened snipped-for-privacy@coop.radagast.org (Dave Platt) wrote in :
I seem to remember the US drones sending unencrypted video, and the enemy using free downloadable satellite software to see where the drones were flying.
It is very useful when you have to collect someone on a flight inbound to an airport with usurious car parking charges for pickup.
You can also subvert some TV sticks with custom drivers as SDR to pick up local information on 1090MHz which ISTR as a part of the deal is shared with the servers for planefinder and it's ilk.
A certain RTL chipset lends itself to this very easily.
-- Regards, Martin Brown
The air traffic position broadcast system is called ADS-B, google for it.
-- -TV
I couldn't find my post, I sent it to Adrian instead of the group, sorry Adrian.
I watched a Cessna 750 cross Michigan at about 590 knots when it entered Lake Erie it sped up and reported 688 knots or 707 mph. Flying above 45,000ft. Slowed back down to 580 knots when it hit land again.
Mikek
More proof that you do not keep up with a damned thing and are about as backwards as it gets.
That was so three years ago, and all the streams *ARE* encrypted now, IDIOT.
I suspect if you use the site, you're automatically added to the watchlist! Mikek:-)
The system is called ADS-B and runs on 1090 MHz. There are internet connected receivers at most of the mountain top sites that provide data to several web sites. If you have a good or unique location, you can possibly get a free recevier:
The ever popular RTL-SDR (RTL2832U) dongle is most commonly used for home reception. There's quite a list of software for following ADS-B:
There's also a system (AIS) that works on VHF frequencies for tracking marine traffic:
All of these operate without the benefit of encryption, which leads potential problems due to the spoofing of positions. I'm not up to date on the latest efforts, but a few years ago, the major efforts were authentication and spoof detection, rather than encrypting the traffic.
Self-promotion: I've done some 1090 MHz antenna and pre-amp designs:
-- Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
I really hope that the professional receivers have better CRC checks than the fr24.com hobbyist receivers. Quite often the position jumps several tens of kilometers away and sooner or later return to the true path.
In other cases the position reports (apparently non-GPS) will give constantly incorrect position reports. The first time I observed this, I was horrified that the plane is going to crash when it approached and landed between runways 04L and 04R, when that airport did not have runway 04C or the plane touched down 1 km before the threshold :-)
Once Obama was visiting Stockholm, the AF1 was visible for about an hour at cruise altitude, but the transponder was shut down a few hundred kilometers before Stockholm.
OTOH Russian transport and military planes are accused of turning off the transponder when flying between St. Petersburg and Kaliningrad when flying through international air corridors, causing near miss situations.
In order to fly through shared air space, you _must_ use non-encrypted height and/or position reporting. Of course, for war time IFF, the system must be encrypted,in a way that is secure for at least a day.
Such position jumps are usually due to ground, building, and mountain reflections on the aircraft GPS receivers. Most (or maybe all) of the TSO approved GPS navigation receivers correct for such sudden excursions in reported position. It's the responsibility of the GPS receiver to deal with such things, not the plotting program. It's my understanding that the plotting programs and web piles do not wish to tweak, smooth, or rationalize any of the incoming data, especially when it might be involved in an incident.
Ground based GPS errors (but applies somewhat to aircraft and vessels):
Impressive. I've seen small errors due to the GPS being set to the wrong datum but not a 1 km error. I don't have a clue where that might be coming from. I've seen some oddities with DGPS, where the LF (low frequency) receiver is spewing garbage. I haven't heard of similar problems with WAAS corrections. Unless your watching something with an inertial navigation and guidance system, I can't think of any other non-GPS position reporting system. Well, maybe a terrain following cruise missile, but they don't normally report their position.
Or, they may have switched from 1090 to 978MHz. I can see signals on
978MHz but can't decode them with hacked 1090MHz software due to changes in the data formatting. I don't believe than any of the online flight tracking web piles are doing anything with 978MHz yet, but am too lazy to double check right now.I didn't know they did that but I'm not surprised. Russia still seems to think they're at war with the west:
Yep. Encryption is not going to work for such a broadcast system. I could probably conjur some kind of anti-spoofing scheme, but the price tag and administrative complexities will probably kill the idea.
On Jan 1, 2020, the next generation of ADS-B "extended squinter" will require a WAAS augmented GPS receiver, and provisions for ADS-B "out" capabilities, on 978MHz. Change everything.
Have fun snooping errr... listening.
-- Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
Check whether such jumps occur near military establishments. GPS jamming experiments are frequently NOTAMed in the UK, and people have reported
1 mile errors near some RAF bases.
Sometimes the plane jumps forward on the runway and then returns to normal acceleration in the middle of the runway,
The most likely explanation is that there are two or receiver stations with different internet propagation delays or the local clocks on the receiving stations are out of synch.
sequence number and the display utility has to make sense of messages arriving from separate receiving stations, with sometimes odd results..
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