Is it REALLY that easy?! (encryption)

[burner50]

a Few months ago, my local police department bought a brand spankin new $25,000 encryption system for ONE repeater channel. It was installed a few weeks later and I began hearing the encrypted static whenever they wanted to be "secure".

LITERALLY days later I hear the dispatcher ask an officer to call the commcenter for some info. The officer said "I dont have my phone on me, switch to secure?", to which the dispatcher came back "WE BELIEVE THAT THIS SUBJECT HAS ACCESS TO THAT PARTICULAR CHANNEL"


what the hell?! Now as a responsible taxpayer i'm holding the bill for this $25,000 encryption system that has apparently been rendered USELESS days after installation?!

Is that actually possible? Or are they just being paranoid.

 

[WayneH]

Could the person the info was about possibly work for the agency? Sounds like a misunderstanding.

 

[w8hey]

Could the person the info was about possibly work for the agency? Sounds like a misunderstanding.

Exactly what I was thinking

 

[N_Jay]

Or crappy encryption

 

[WayneH]

Or crappy encryption

aka scrambling. "encrypted static" could be many things. Makes me think of analog encryption since it sounds like static though Motorola no longer supports it.

 

[burner50]

I cant remember what company made it, and I am not interested in breaking it...


But anyway, as I said the system is relatively new, no digital here. It sounds like static with some bits of silence and a high pitched tone in the middle

 

[MattSR]

securenet woohoo

 

[MOTOROLANUT]

New radios

LMAO....Could be worse....Remember Donald Duck Phase Inversion Scrambling......Who knows they might ever buy some of those new Fangled Cordless Telephones in the 46.XXX freq Range....LMMFAO

 

[ElroyJetson]

I think that in this case, the dispatcher probably had a very incomplete understanding of how encryption works and how many different codes there are. In practical, real world terms, even ordinary DES is
unbreakable. You won't brute-force crack a DES key in time for the information to be useful in a timely
fashion, in almost every case.

If the subject has access to the encrypted key in current use, you're deep into Internal Affairs territory
already, or you've got a problem child in the radio shop.


Elroy

 

[Sjinndoawi]

Yes

It happens more then people think...

 

[JnglMassiv]

That high pitched tone at the end of a tx is characteristic of Motorola Securenet, their obsolete digital encryption for analog radio channels. Here's a soundbyte from KB9UKD's great site:
http://www.kb9ukd.com/digital/des.wav
This link makes noise!!

My first thought was that the agency had misplaced a radio, couldn't kill or stun it and hadn't been able to rekey the remaining radios. For $25k, you wouldn't get a very sophisticated system at all.

It's also possible that the subject was under surveillance and acted in some manner that those watching thought he might be listening. For example, suppose the day after a covert team discoveres where the badguy's girlfriend lives, a phonetap hears the badguy say 'The cops are on to me. They know where my girl's house is'. That might spook the coverts into thinking their comms are compromised.

 

[burner50]

That high pitched tone at the end of a tx is characteristic of Motorola Securenet, their obsolete digital encryption for analog radio channels. Here's a soundbyte from KB9UKD's great site:
http://www.kb9ukd.com/digital/des.wav
This link makes noise!!

My first thought was that the agency had misplaced a radio, couldn't kill or stun it and hadn't been able to rekey the remaining radios. For $25k, you wouldn't get a very sophisticated system at all.

It's also possible that the subject was under surveillance and acted in some manner that those watching thought he might be listening. For example, suppose the day after a covert team discoveres where the badguy's girlfriend lives, a phonetap hears the badguy say 'The cops are on to me. They know where my girl's house is'. That might spook the coverts into thinking their comms are compromised.

Well this is little bumfuk iowa, if there was something being investigated, the detective department (2 officers) uses all cell phones, and if it were something THAT major it probably wouldnt be given to a simple patrol officer...

And its not that they lost a radio and had to have it re-keyed, they never had the capability before, and they had a bid letting for a NEW system. Not second hand info, actual legal notifications / council meetings...


Anyway, it is identical to the sound above.

Small town department, one channel for everything.

So the dispatcher was being overcautious? That eases my rage a bit.

 

[dsheli]

I guarantee that the information the dispatcher needed to communicate to the officer or supervisor involved another officer. Ether it involved a complaint or something she did not want the entire squad to know about.
David