Explain feature encryption and features, please?

[ElroyJetson]

Can someone give me the basics of feature encryption and how features are added, deleted or changed on Ericsson radios, please?

Elroy

[JohnWayne]

In a nutshell:

The radios are shipped with all options potentially available, but some are disabled depending on what you order. Lets use an example of an MDX that I upgraded:

You read the radio with the RadioMaint utility; there you will see a long hex string called the Feature Data. You call up MA-Com and tell them that you have an MDX that you want to upgrade from 16 to 128 groups. You give the lady your credit card number, and then you read her the Feature Data string. She then reads you back a string that you use to replace the existing one. $250 and 5 minutes later, your radio is upgraded. It is akin to Windows XP telephone activation.

As far as hacking your own Feature Code; good luck. I really doubt that it is possible.

jeff

[ElroyJetson]

Well, then....maybe someone should start an information database?

It would include the radio type, features enabled, firmware and DSP revisions, and feature string, for every radio that anyone chooses to add to the database.

If your radio has the same firmware and DSP as mine does but yours has more features, it seems to me that all I need to get is your feature string and blow it into my radio to upgrade it.

Given enough examples, maybe even the feature encryption might be cracked.

Elroy

[jcs162]

Actually a data base probably would not help, and I am not sure would exactaly be legal. The "encryption" part of feature encryption refers to the fact that it's keyed to the ROM serial number and radio code files, that's why a feature string from one radio won't work in another, usually that is. Changing the numbers in your feature string won't work either, most of the time. When you update they need the radio code version (the .bin file), the dsp version, the feature string, and the ROM serial number, especially in the newer radios like Jags, everything has to match to update the features correctly. There are some people out there that contend they have successfully hacked the codes, like the LPE's you see on eBay with every feature enabled and 65565 talkgroups available but display a "DSP ERROR" the first time they try to listen to a ProVoice system. Lots of times those are running on some type of evaluation/development radio code that slipped out of the factory.