Edacs Esk / Programer Personality Weakness

[SCPD]

I read a Radio a Programed with esk with no esk card reader
when it was programed with esk key A0-Hex or Dec-160
With Programer and tryed to save the personality
with the Tab File/save tab it did not work but then i used the tab File/Save as
and Named/rename the file because it did not read the *.per file Text right
and the personality saved to a file
unusal for this to happen

but in some of the feilds there is missing info like (Trunked Frequency sets)
(Group sets) so i open the *.per File up in a hex editor and the file looked
to be the full personality the (Group sets) where there WIth the text tags
now i did not try to upload the file into a radio and now the file is old and out dated
but always wondered if the file was a good file
i know i have to have esk FEATURE in the radio to upload the personality
i whould pay for this FEATURE to test this weakness out

i tryed to download the new personality and programer returned a message
somthing like your programer is older the the programer ver that programed this radio
and data chould not be saved

for the system admin of Edacs/ESK Systems you might what to keep up on new programer ver
of software so the personality can not be downloaded cause you dont know that this might lead to.

this is posted to educate the system admins on a Weakness that MA-COM/Harris might not tell you
this may not be a Weakness but i think it is a good bet it may be

 

[greenthumb]

Okay, so it's a way to see the GID and frequency sets in the personality, but if you have your hands on a radio, it's probably easier just to step through everything with Unitrunker and watch the radio affiliate.

How do you see this being a weakness in ESK, in terms of having the ability to either program a radio to work on an ESK system without the need for the smart card, or recover the actual ESK key data?

 

[SCPD]

for the above comment if you can read an esk (Personality) *.per and save it
with out a smart card
you chould clone the radio with the same config channels/talkgroup/with esk enabled
provided you have the esk option enabled in your radio
never had a chance to test the personality out but did save it for future studys
and testing now the radio (Personality) *.per is out dated it whould still boot on system but whould not track lcn right due to rebanding of local system and to remind you the frequency sets did not display in there feilds
and talkgroups did not display in there feilds but in hex editor i saw the talk group text tags displayed and noted the (Personality) *.per was the right size for the info that should be in radio

 

[greenthumb]

That won't write the ESK codes back to the radio. You'll have the personality along with the frequency and group set information that you can 'hack' out of it with a hex editor, but once you try to write it back to the radio, the ESK codes won't be present in a smart card to write from in order to make the radio work on the ESK system. The ESK key data does not live in the .per file-

 

[SCPD]

ok i know the esk key must be in the radio you can pay for this option to be in radio
and if this option is in the radio the key is in the radio should load the esk key with the (*.Per)
or Personality i will get the option added just will need to get a new version of programer to try
the Read/Write loading of a new Personality to radio to test option

also i found a possible way get the (*.Per) or Personality from a new radio with the old programer Version
the old version appears to read the (*.Per) or Personality and returns the message Something like Programer is out date
but i still reads the (*.Per) or Personality just shows the message does not load info from radio but dump the string of data to programer
to return the message so i am looking at a (Serial Port Monitor) Program to get the dumped info and try to get the (*.Per) or Personality
info from the program now my only thought is than some where in the (*.Per) or Personality code there is the string that has the version of programer and the (*.Per) or Personality may rejected Radio/Program still due to new edtion of programer

 

[EnidPuceflange]

The purpose of ESK (and Motorola's very similar system key) is to prevent unauthorized people being able to put radios onto a system. It doesn't prevent you reading the personality out of the radio (hey, you can use some of the free serial port protocol analyzers around and look at the data), but it DOES stop anyone putting a transmitter onto the protected system

That's pretty much it. And that's pretty much all it is sold as being able to do.