Decryption?

[lep]

OMG, as my grandchildren say in their text messages. Prior to my retirement I attended ITU-R Study Group meetings in Geneve, Switzerland where approvals were granted to digital formats that were proposed as International Standards. EDACS was presented by Erricson at one of those meetings I attended some years ago. Being granted the imprimatur of an international standard doesn't mean a whole lot in the USA but is an important licensing and marketing step in many other countries. Yes is it a digital modulation scheme and is not natively encrypted although that is possible. No you cannot decrypt digital (or analogue) schemes without the Key. Even when not encrypted the formats are intellectual property of the patent holder and require the maker of a receiver to have a license, P-25 and EDACS licenses are available. ProVoice is not.
As far as I know, no one has purchased a license for D-STAR, IDAS or Motobro.
Can a computer/scanner/interested person build a home-brew system that will decrypt a modern on-the-air digital two-way radio system? Not likely. But go right ahead and waste time if you want!

[TellThem]

I have no professional back ground in this, merely a hobbyist. I have worked with video cards to decrypt my own network information, even over wireless. It seems possible to decrypt information through either parallel computation in a beowulf cluster, or simpler with an SLI format of video cards. (AMD video cards do better floating point mathematics)

I believe the radio frequency will need to be in a digital format using a HDTV digital tuner and configured to the computer with some form of software, and recorded. Once a sound is sampled it may be a shorter amount of time solve for X. Perhaps a matter of hours. Not months.

In summary I think video cards may be a solution, or a rapid brute force technique. If the computer power was there, shouldn't it seem reasonable? I've seen people use Amazon's cloud computers as a force to decrypt massively complicated formats. I'm only approaching things from the hardware perspective, since I have no understanding of digital radio software. However, if it can be done to wireless networking. I would suspect that it can be done to radio. Even digital radio is far older than some other technologies at our disposal right now.

[rdale]

Decrypting complicated formats, and even encrypted wireless, is not the same as decrypting encrypted audio on the fly. Good try though!

[eorange]

How so? Please explain.

[zz0468]

Current P25 encryption methods have been hacked. But decryption will always be outside the capabilities of the hobby level scanner listener. As advanced efforts find and exploit flaws in current encryption methods, the methods used will advance as well. Legalities will prevent any hardware from being sold to hobbyists. The technical challenges will, as well. It's not going to appear in an add on box for your scanner, and it's not going to appear as an iPhone app.

[johnls7424]

P25 systems are overrated. At least Phase I systems are. They are used everywhere and are reliable for the most part, but with so many other systems out there it has been proven that some are even more reliable. I am not talking about the ever so failing EDACS Standard/Provoice system I am talking about Opensky. These systems are even more impossible to hack and other PD's when figuring out interopp between other departments and services can link them all together without a huge budget. It will happen

[rdale]

OpenSky is HIGHLY unreliable. Think you listened to a sales rep. Search the forum for the truth.

[fredva]

Originally Posted by johnls7424

P25 systems are overrated. At least Phase I systems are. They are used everywhere and are reliable for the most part, but with so many other systems out there it has been proven that some are even more reliable. I am not talking about the ever so failing EDACS Standard/Provoice system I am talking about Opensky. These systems are even more impossible to hack and other PD's when figuring out interopp between other departments and services can link them all together without a huge budget. It will happen

Uh, excuse me? Of the systems you mentioned, OpenSky is the one with the reputation of being unreliable. You need to read the news articles posted on this site about cities, counties, and states having problems with OpenSky.

[kayn1n32008]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (BlackBerry; U; BlackBerry 9780; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.8+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/6.0.0.600 Mobile Safari/534.8+)

Originally Posted by johnls7424

P25 systems are overrated. At least Phase I systems are. They are used everywhere and are reliable for the most part, but with so many other systems out there it has been proven that some are even more reliable. I am not talking about the ever so failing EDACS Standard/Provoice system I am talking about Opensky. These systems are even more impossible to hack and other PD's when figuring out interopp between other departments and services can link them all together without a huge budget. It will happen

As soon as you allow a computer or PLC to start controlling a radio system you will always have the possibility of failure. My city uses EDACS with analog and Provoice talkgroups. It has over the years proven to be very reliable, granted there have been some issues (show me a trunk system that NEVER fails and I will sell you cheap ocean fron property in Arizona) but all in all it has served our city very well. The other major city in my province uses Motorola type 2 smart zone with both digital and analog talkgroups. It also has been reliable, although the coverage is starting to be questionable due to the cities huge growth over the last 10 years.

Opensky on the other hand does NOT have the proven track record of either of the Three other major trunking formats.

[MikeOxlong]

Originally Posted by johnls7424

P I am not talking about the ever so failing EDACS Standard/Provoice system I am talking about Opensky.

Wow. I think somebody's credibility on this site just plummeted.

[kayn1n32008]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (BlackBerry; U; BlackBerry 9780; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.8+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/6.0.0.600 Mobile Safari/534.8+)

Originally Posted by MikeOxlong

Wow. I think somebody's credibility on this site just plummeted.

What cred? I have never heard the words Opensky and Reliable in the same sentence when it comes to PS systems, EDACS, Smartzone, and P25 on the otherhand... More so with proper engineering, realistic budget, and proper, ongoing PM.