Is this Basic, Enhanced or AES Encryption...DMR MOTOTRBO

[phantomcrow]

That would be normal. Should be static between transmissions and digital noise during the transmission.

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[Motoballa]

So how does one get AES for Mototrbo?

I suppose know the right people. A friend of mine ordered a dozen 7550e's and they were loaded, AES and all.. I was shocked when I read em and saw "AES 256" was activated in all of them. Didn't even know that was a feature.

 

[Forts]

It is available for sure... I think the dealer just needs to plead their case with Mother Moto to make it happen. There is a police agency not too far from me that was very unhappy with EP and they are now running AES (on XPR-7550s).

phantomcrow - that sample looks good. Looks like enhanced privacy to me.

 

[phantomcrow]

It is available for sure... I think the dealer just needs to plead their case with Mother Moto to make it happen. There is a police agency not too far from me that was very unhappy with EP and they are now running AES (on XPR-7550s).

phantomcrow - that sample looks good. Looks like enhanced privacy to me.

Is there a specific way to determine it so I know for future reference?

 

[RRR]

There is a police agency not too far from me that was very unhappy with EP and they are now running AES (on XPR-7550s).

Curious as to what they aren't happy with, with EP? Could it be the notable degradation of quality of voice? The loss of range, since each packet must be received perfectly in order for the radio to "un-mute", wich is less likely to happen on fringes, where un-enc channels will still be heard? The issue with radios on scan failing to "un-mute" if the first part of an Enc. transmission is not received?

But in all honesty, what would they not be "satisfied" about, with the Enc that comes with the Mototrbo? I seriously doubt anyone has found a way to have cracked Mototrbo's Enhanced Enc.

 

[jonwienke]

Curious as to what they aren't happy with, with EP? Could it be the notable degradation of quality of voice? The loss of range, since each packet must be received perfectly in order for the radio to "un-mute", wich is less likely to happen on fringes, where un-enc channels will still be heard? The issue with radios on scan failing to "un-mute" if the first part of an Enc. transmission is not received?

Error correction is added after encryption, so encryption has no effect on voice quality or usable range. If error correction was applied before encryption, encryption would decrease usable range by about 90%, as a single bit error anywhere in a data packet would prevent decoding.

 

[slicerwizard]

Curious as to what they aren't happy with, with EP? Could it be the notable degradation of quality of voice? The loss of range, since each packet must be received perfectly in order for the radio to "un-mute", wich is less likely to happen on fringes, where un-enc channels will still be heard? The issue with radios on scan failing to "un-mute" if the first part of an Enc. transmission is not received?

And you think that any of this (if it were actually true) would be the slightest bit different with AES?

But in all honesty, what would they not be "satisfied" about, with the Enc that comes with the Mototrbo? I seriously doubt anyone has found a way to have cracked Mototrbo's Enhanced Enc.

You're delusional.

 

[kayn1n32008]

I seriously doubt anyone has found a way to have cracked Mototrbo's Enhanced Enc.

40bit RC4 is less secure than 56bit DES. Even if RC4 had the same key space as DES, it is a weaker cipher than DES.

DES was brute forced in the 90’s.
100% RC4 is compromised. All RC4 keeps scanners from listening/streaming. That’s it. RC4 does NOT ensure secure comms.

 

[Forts]

Radios not un-muting on weak signal is/was a big issue, especially with older firmware. I was able to do some testing a few years back with a handful of radios on the fringe of reception with a local repeater. Transmissions placed in the clear unmuted reliably while transmissions with enhanced privacy enabled were completely hit or miss. But the even bigger issue was on the TX side. I could key up a radio, get a good PTT tone from the radio (no bonks) and absolutely nothing would go thru. Turn privacy off and the call would go thru successfully. So.... you could see where that certainly would be a concern for an officer calling for backup. I haven't had a chance to repeat these tests with much newer firmware & AES but will in the near future.

 

[jonwienke]

Radios not un-muting on weak signal is/was a big issue, especially with older firmware. I was able to do some testing a few years back with a handful of radios on the fringe of reception with a local repeater. Transmissions placed in the clear unmuted reliably while transmissions with enhanced privacy enabled were completely hit or miss. But the even bigger issue was on the TX side. I could key up a radio, get a good PTT tone from the radio (no bonks) and absolutely nothing would go thru. Turn privacy off and the call would go thru successfully. So.... you could see where that certainly would be a concern for an officer calling for backup. I haven't had a chance to repeat these tests with much newer firmware & AES but will in the near future.

That's a firmware bug, not a problem inherent to encryption. Properly implemented, encryption has zero impact on range or voice quality. If TYT can do it, Motorola surely can.

 

[Forts]

Key word being "properly implemented"... Moto even freely admits that using EP degrades voice quailty, however I really don't find it all that noticeable.

 

[Ubbe]

One company that I monitor went from analog to DMR and DSDPlus reported that they used RAS and EP encryption. It was a lot of customer complaints that it was much worse than on analog. They then removed encryption but kept RAS and the users said it was much better but still worse than the analog system. They reverted back to analog and are still on the old system since a couple of years back.

Why would encryption make things worse, it's still the same databits that gets transmitted over air and then decoded? Is it the CPU in the radios and repeater that doesn't have power enough to do the calculations?

/Ubbe

 

[slicerwizard]

Sounds like improper configuration.

 

[kayn1n32008]

One company that I monitor went from analog to DMR and DSDPlus reported that they used RAS and EP encryption. It was a lot of customer complaints that it was much worse than on analog. They then removed encryption but kept RAS and the users said it was much better but still worse than the analog system. They reverted back to analog and are still on the old system since a couple of years back.

Why would encryption make things worse, it's still the same databits that gets transmitted over air and then decoded? Is it the CPU in the radios and repeater that doesn't have power enough to do the calculations?

/Ubbe

It’s Motorola’s ****ty implementation of enhanced privacy encryption.

I have experienced lack of sync and lack of re-sync using encryption on DMR. It is however worth not being eavesdropped on by busy bodies.

 

[Ubbe]

I have experienced lack of sync and lack of re-sync using encryption on DMR.

That seemed to be the exact problem. Users where going back and forth between analog and digital and voiced their findings on the analog channel and the mobiles sometimes did not hear a conversation on the DMR repeater even when well inside the coverage area.

The company that handle the customer was probably not so digital experianced, "how difficult can it be?" and enabled all options and features there where in the DMR system. If they had started without encryption and RAS they probably only would have had to dealth with the new user to digital syndrome, as you run into when trying to understand a new accent. It takes a while until the brain have adapted and you begin to understand what they are saying. But now they are burnt by the bad experiance and stays on the analog channel. I don't know why they went encrypted. It's a tow company that get the cars assigned to them so that no one else can take the tow jobs away from them.

/Ubbe

 

[poltergeisty]

Dsdplus cannot as of yet tell the difference between enhanced privacy and AES256

That's interesting seen as how both algorithms are completely different. It shouldn't be difficult to distinguish between AES and RC4.


About the repeater discussions a page back.

No configuration is required in the repeater to support AES - other than setting the Privacy to Enhanced. The repeater does not encrypt or decrypt any encrypted payload - this done in the radio or MNIS.

MOTOTRBO: Setting up AES

The all-things-MOTOTRBO blog by Wayne Holmes DJ0WH.

cwh050.blogspot.com

 

[LD723]

That's interesting seen as how both algorithms are completely different. It shouldn't be difficult to distinguish between AES and RC4.


About the repeater discussions a page back.

MOTOTRBO: Setting up AES

The all-things-MOTOTRBO blog by Wayne Holmes DJ0WH.

cwh050.blogspot.com

It may be because the author of dsdplus just had it set to show EP on enhanced and aes possibly

 

[poltergeisty]

That could be it.

I haven't run into an AES here yet, but a lot of ADP which I find laughable. Referring to IMBE though.

 

[RRR]

Radios not un-muting on weak signal is/was a big issue, especially with older firmware. I was able to do some testing a few years back with a handful of radios on the fringe of reception with a local repeater. Transmissions placed in the clear unmuted reliably while transmissions with enhanced privacy enabled were completely hit or miss. But the even bigger issue was on the TX side. I could key up a radio, get a good PTT tone from the radio (no bonks) and absolutely nothing would go thru. Turn privacy off and the call would go thru successfully. So.... you could see where that certainly would be a concern for an officer calling for backup. I haven't had a chance to repeat these tests with much newer firmware & AES but will in the near future.

I am glad I'm not the only person who had had these issues with ENC enabled on 'Trbo.

And a "late entry" on scan will sometimes get you an ID on your screen, with no audio passed as well, with Enc enabled.

Of course, all this could have been improved with the last few FW updates, haven't used Enc for anything in a while now.

 

[n3obl]

late entry is caused by the repeater not set for encryption and proper type. The encryption type on repeater causes the encryption packet to me retransmitted every so many frames so you can join in mid conversation.