So much for my blocked tailnumber

[denverpilot]

By the way it wasn't the RSA algorithm that was mathematically busted. It was RSA as a contractor (the company name) that was relying on unknown (turned out to be NSA) sourced mathematics and more importantly un-audited code for heavy duty encryption stuff.

 

[denverpilot]

By the way the above reference wasn't to the RSA algorithm that was mathematically busted.

It was reference to RSA as a government contractor (the company not the algorithm named for three people) that was relying on unknown (turned out to be NSA) sourced mathematics and more importantly un-audited code for heavy duty encryption stuff.

 

[Sundancer]

Guys, it isn't Uncle Sam looking in your sock drawer - he doesn't care all that much about your details; he has constraints, and gets "outed" by the geeks, noids, elected talking heads, new legislation. . .looking for phone number associations is a long way from tracking your intimate life elements (Google, for example). Uncle's major threat to us is incompetence, a'la VA, OPM, IRS. . .

Google, et al, have no constraints on collection - you "opt in" just by buying the box, or using the service. Nah, it isn't the Feds - they don't have the time, interest, or incentive, once it's clear you aren't a threat. And lame though the process may or may not be, they do need a warrant, etc.. .Google just needs a click. . .

I see the Feds way down the list of privacy threats, other than being too butt-stupid to secure a network or encrypt data.

 

[Sundancer]

You missed my point - Fed legislation forcing FAA to encrypt and deny public access, absent a compelling need (via a judge and subpoena). Still available for criminal prosecution, or civil actions. Just not lying about for the idle curious, or prurient interests. Like IRS and your tax records. I might be curious about yours, but I don't get to see them just because. . .

For retail, just brutal, draconian, expensive fines for effing up. Maybe once or twice it's a civil penalty. Third time is criminal. . .

 

[deonb]

Of course, that means that the real attacks against it will be distributed denial of service attacks, just like in every other real network discipline. A bunch of cheap Raspberry Pi or similar controller and a cheap 978 transmitter scattered somewhere making thousands of thousands of false position reports -- will freak out all that stuff.

That's not the nightmare scenario - that just changes the system into a white elephant. The nightmare scenario are spoofing and offsetting airplanes in the pattern - are their systems really immune to a ground signal displacing an aircraft by 1000 ft?

Maybe they are, but why keep it a secret then? I'd rather not stake the life of my family members on having all people in the FAA being immune to bribery, blackmail & depression.

 

[deonb]

It was reference to RSA as a government contractor (the company not the algorithm named for three people) that was relying on unknown (turned out to be NSA) sourced mathematics and more importantly un-audited code for heavy duty encryption stuff.

Got it. Sorry, misunderstood. You are of course right. That's also a huge no in my book.

 

[dans2992]

"Perfectly legal" - see that quote a lot in concert with sleazy, parasitical activity. Also the preface "Plenty of other. . .".

Look, I realize you probably don't think of yourself as an enabler of stalkers, cretins, low-lifes, and a monetizer of data provided by an inept and non-accountable Agency. . .or, maybe you do? Just gonna exercise my 1st amendment right to say it sucks. . .

I understand your concern. This type of thing can either go on behind closed doors, with the data accessible to only a privileged few, or out in the open.

Personally, I prefer out in the open so everyone knows what's possible.

Also, this technology exposes stuff like this:

https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-baltimore-secret-surveillance/

Imagine the government's huge archive of this footage? How much do you trust them?

 

[Lindberg]

The sad thing is, it would have just taken a $15 device to secure ADS-B.

e.g. Smart Card Reader and an individual Smart Card issued to each airplane containing a bunch of revokable private & public keys, depending on the direction of communication. Then each broadcast is signed with the key and the other side can validate. If keys are compromised - issue new cards. This is 20 year old technology.

This is one of those things where if you think the solution is simple, you probably don't understand the problem.

You missed my point - Fed legislation forcing FAA to encrypt and deny public access, absent a compelling need (via a judge and subpoena). Still available for criminal prosecution, or civil actions. Just not lying about for the idle curious, or prurient interests. Like IRS and your tax records. I might be curious about yours, but I don't get to see them just because. . .

For retail, just brutal, draconian, expensive fines for effing up. Maybe once or twice it's a civil penalty. Third time is criminal. . .

How would that work in a system that's designed to be broadcast, sessionless, and promiscuous? The ability to eavesdrop is a fundamental component of the system.

 

[Sundancer]

I understand your concern. This type of thing can either go on behind closed doors, with the data accessible to only a privileged few, or out in the open.

Personally, I prefer out in the open so everyone knows what's possible.

Also, this technology exposes stuff like this:

https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-baltimore-secret-surveillance/

Imagine the government's huge archive of this footage? How much do you trust them?

Not sure how Baltimore behaving badly makes dumping personal data mishandled by the FAA better?

Personally, I think it's sleazy. And like it or not, gov't tracking has constraints; so yeah, actually, fewer people with access would be better. And everyone already knows what's possible - It's self-serving to claim that as a reason to support prurient prying into other's activities.

Listen, don't take this personal - as you say, what you do is legal. But acting as a surrogate conduit for data the feds collect, just to show they have it? That's weak, man; we all know they have a lot of our info, and we, rationally, expect them to hold it close, absent a compelling reason to disclose. You don't have one, and the info shouldn't be available to you. . .

 

[Sundancer]

This is one of those things where if you think the solution is simple, you probably don't understand the problem.
How would that work in a system that's designed to be broadcast, sessionless, and promiscuous? The ability to eavesdrop is a fundamental component of the system.

Spliting hairs, I think. The content can be constrained, for one thing. . .

 

[dans2992]

Baltimore "behaving badly" is related because if they do something like this and just block the tail number, nobody knows.

Ever see this site? Www.openbarr.net ? They use voice recognition on clearance delivery frequencies to figure out where planes are going. There's more than one way to skin a cat here.

I realize some people won't like it. I'm not trying to "justify" it, just saying it's not all bad.

I have military radar people in a European country who say they use this website as a "backup" to their actual radar system. Odd, but true.

I have SAR people in the U.K. using it to track their helicopters.

Originally I just started doing this as a technical challenge/curiosity thing. I just simply find it "interesting". Sort of like listening to the police scanner.

 

[denverpilot]

How would that work in a system that's designed to be broadcast, sessionless, and promiscuous? The ability to eavesdrop is a fundamental component of the system.

Works just fine in many systems designed just that way.

Originally I just started doing this as a technical challenge/curiosity thing. I just simply find it "interesting". Sort of like listening to the police scanner.

An excellent example. Public safety agencies are more and more installing dispatch systems (broadcast, promiscuous, and sessionless interoperability is possible as long as a public/private key system is used to transfer symmetric keys and place them in the radios) that are either encrypted on-demand, or continuously.

In fact, my State's shared linked system has had that capability since before the DNC was here for before the first Obama term. It was part of the APCO Project 25 specification two decades ago.

Some things added later for physical security of the radios type problems were "remote wipe/kill" in case someone who shouldn't have gear, got ahold of it. But that was fixed long ago also.

Having been part of an interop project between agencies, the fault was in how to disseminate those symmetric keys to other agencies, but it's been solved in a number of ways, including as mentioned above, wrapping it in PKI. Or trusted people simply handing over a thumb drive to another trusted person, but that was the bad old days.

In aviation, since you can't trust the device (anyone can crack it open and stick an oscilloscope or logic analyzer inside) you'd need PKI with a distributed database and rotating keys that can be "untrusted" by the administrators of the system. None of which is particularly new or novel.

Symmetric keys with the ability to remote kill is probably quite sufficient if a distribution chain through manufacturers was created for control and loading of keys into individual units. The card key idea is the simplest way to do that but too subject to vibration and loss problems for my tastes.

Again, nothing new in RF multipoint systems.

 

[denverpilot]

That's not the nightmare scenario - that just changes the system into a white elephant. The nightmare scenario are spoofing and offsetting airplanes in the pattern - are their systems really immune to a ground signal displacing an aircraft by 1000 ft?

Maybe they are, but why keep it a secret then? I'd rather not stake the life of my family members on having all people in the FAA being immune to bribery, blackmail & depression.

Nah. One aircraft down won't even hit the papers anywhere but the aviation press for a while. Then a little rumble and back to whatever distraction of the day the politicians find to toss to the media.

Make O'Hare shut down by killing the system regionally, you'll have total freak out mode on the TV.

Your family is already not immune to those things, all you need to do is find one controller in IMC who'll vector two blips together.

I don't see ADS-B as making that particularly any worse unless you're claiming Technical Operations staff are more likely to be bribed, blackmailed, or depressed than anyone else who can make two blips seem further apart than they are, or simply run them into each other.

All sorts of folks could make those scenarios happen without need of ADS-B. Especially since it isn't and never will be, per FAA, a replacement for radar. Heck most of that code is written by contractors and nobody actually reads it all.

Nah.. I think making large chunks of the system fail is a much more "distributive event" that'd happen and cause a lot of problems.

But then again, all the public would be told is that a big black box somewhere in government failed and it's shut down now, and all the trains will run on time.

You don't read about public safety dispatch failures unless a hobbyist tips off the local media that it's been down more than its been up, either. That's not the sort of thing government willingly does press conferences on until they have to. But they happen all the time. If the agency is big enough and has a big enough budget, maybe they have a backup system.

In this case, what would the backup for ADS-B be? It doesn't need one. Radar is still primary and is planned to be primary for the long distant future.

 

[deonb]

This is one of those things where if you think the solution is simple, you probably don't understand the problem.

I deal with that stuff every day. It's so simple I wouldn't even considered it engineering anymore. The only way you can screw it up is to ignore what people did before you and try and come up with your own thing that works differently... which is exactly what the FAA did.

 

[deonb]

In this case, what would the backup for ADS-B be? It doesn't need one. Radar is still primary and is planned to be primary for the long distant future.

That wasn't the published intent though - the intent with NextGen is for ADS-B to replace radar and for the radar system to become a backup (and to be reduced by half over the next decade). They're not going to be able to do that if they can't trust the system. At least, I hope that they're not going to try and do that!

Admittedly, this is probably not that great a threat even if it is compromised - but I would have just loved to have been a fly on the wall to see how people design a system that's this sensitive and not give any consideration to authenticity.

I cannot even fathom how that went - I've worked on much less sensitive systems where we spent months and months on the tiniest of security detail that isn't even 0.1% as critical as this. It's just naturally part of the process. So I'm shocked, stunned and not a little amazed to see someone coming up with this in this day and age.

I could actually care less about whether it's encrypted or not, but geez, it doesn't take any effort to sign the broadcasts. So maybe a 7816 smartcard isn't the best solution as you pointed out, due to vibration, but I know Garmin would have jumped on the opportunity to solder a DB9 connector to the thing and sell it for $1000.

 

[denverpilot]

That wasn't the published intent though - the intent with NextGen is for ADS-B to replace radar and for the radar system to become a backup (and to be reduced by half over the next decade).

I don't believe this is correct. None of the current documentation supports that they'd replace radar with ADS-B. Even the much touted Memphis deployment to attempt to cram more FedEx aircraft in at once, has completely disappeared from the public spotlight it got early on.

(Nobody's going to say it didn't work, but silence tells that story.)

That's how boondoggles work. After the first couple of billion is spent, you obviously need "Phase II". And "Phase III" ... ad nauseum.

ADS-B, recall, started as a way to help avoid traffic and get weather in a place where neither were readily available: Alaska. It may have met the goals for that pretty well. Especially for the dates in which that project stared, it was "high tech".

As a regional tool to fix a specific problem, ADS-B was decent.

It was the expansion to everywhere else that became the boondoggle.

See aforementioned APCO Project-25 standards and massive contracts to outfit public safety with it. Competitors like the already working European standard and even better quality open standards like DMR were ignored -- because of good old "not invented here", and then P-25 needed revisions. And a new vocoder. And pretty much a major redesign to fix all the stuff wrong with it.

It only took getting a few firefighters killed with jt to realize the highly compressed vocoder didn't work well enough through an oxygen mask to handle that sort of work, for one example. (Many fire agencies went back to analog FM on-scene after word of those problems started to spread.)

Tech done half-baked is a permanent job for lots of people and billions of dollars still to be spent down the road. Heck, nowadays you don't even have to plan Phase II... just call it "continuous improvement" and send big checks.

Wide-area multilateralization could actually have replaced radar at incredibly low prices compared to active radar.* It did in the Aspen valley. But again, German company, "not invented here", and not something that could be dragged out for billions of dollars over decades.

*For ATC. Not for air defense.

 

[deonb]

I don't believe this is correct. None of the current documentation supports that they'd replace radar with ADS-B. E

http://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigations/Ghost-Planes-Clouding-the-Skies-179679721.html
"The FAA plans to maintain about half of the current network of secondary radars as a backup to ADS-B in the unlikely event it is needed" - Ian Gregor (FAA)


https://www.faa.gov/nextgen/programs/adsb/faq/#g1
"It forms the foundation for NextGen by moving from ground radar and navigational aids to precise tracking using satellite signals."

"The improved accuracy, integrity and reliability of satellite signals over radar means controllers eventually will be able to safely reduce the minimum separation distance between aircraft and increase capacity in the nation's skies."
(You can't reduce minimum separation if it's not the primary system.)

 

[denverpilot]

http://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigations/Ghost-Planes-Clouding-the-Skies-179679721.html
"The FAA plans to maintain about half of the current network of secondary radars as a backup to ADS-B in the unlikely event it is needed" - Ian Gregor (FAA)


https://www.faa.gov/nextgen/programs/adsb/faq/#g1
"It forms the foundation for NextGen by moving from ground radar and navigational aids to precise tracking using satellite signals."

"The improved accuracy, integrity and reliability of satellite signals over radar means controllers eventually will be able to safely reduce the minimum separation distance between aircraft and increase capacity in the nation's skies."
(You can't reduce minimum separation if it's not the primary system.)

All marketing. None of the operational documents have supported it, and have contradicted the marketing spin from day one.

The Memphis thing was the first reduced separation trials. It disappeared into thin air.

Note carefully that buzzword in there too, "foundation". That word always means, "This is prototype we already know can't work. We will be back later asking for a lot more money." LOL.

Note also the careful mixing of ADS-B and "NexGen". There is no actual definition of NexGen. Another entire system could be developed and given the NexGen marketing stamp of approval.

It's the ultimate FAA buzzword these days. Everything is NexGen, until tomorrow, when it's OldGen and we need more money for NexGen II!

 

[paflyer]

Or Starbucks. If you've ever connected to one of their free Wifis, likely your phone tries to connect to every one you drive past, and they are everywhere. So Starbucks knows where you live, where you go, where you eat, what time you leave for work, and who you're sleeping with. If they care.

Bull. If they have anything it's the phone's MAC, which is essentially personally unidentifiable except to your carrier and the feds, and if you're smart ,not even them. BTW, the wifi and the location "service" on my phone is off unless I want to connect to a network.

The information you mention is what you (not me) give to the Census Bureau in the "American Community Survey"- which I've refused to respond to.

 

[tawood]

Blocking tail numbers, blocking location service on phones, etc...makes me laugh.

We are all...ALL OF US...putting our information out there for everyone to see, whether you try to block it or not. If you know where to look, you would be shocked at what is available.
I do investigations for the government (guess that makes me a henchman for the "overlords", as James331 puts it). Give me nothing more than an internet connection (nothing more special than Google...don't need the restricted access government databases), and I'll tell you what car you drive, where you work, and then (for more than 50% of you), show you an actual photograph of your own living room.

Not that you should go crazy posting personal info...but blocking tail numbers etc are not going to come even close to "getting off the info grid"...not any more.

 

[paflyer]

It's publically available data and perfectly legal.

Does that make it right?

 

[dans2992]

Does that make it right?

Considering the same data is available from many other places, I don't see that there's a big moral tradeoff. I'm not making anything available that isn't available elsewhere.

Your "blocked" tail number is just an illusion.

 

[dans2992]

Also, I can tell you this - if you don't want to appear, just fly with your transponder in "Mode C" only mode.

You'll be invisible until the ADS-B mandate kicks in.

 

[dans2992]

Frankly, it amazes me that a system designed to be _worldwide_ was architected without any thought to security.

It must not have been very high on their priority list.

 

[dans2992]

Some related discussion: https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-...ypted-ads-b-out-confounds-aircraft-blocking-0

 

[Sundancer]

Considering the same data is available from many other places, I don't see that there's a big moral tradeoff. I'm not making anything available that isn't available elsewhere.

Your "blocked" tail number is just an illusion.

The "I'm no worse than the other guy kicking the puppy" . Just diffrent perspectives.

 

[Sundancer]

Blocking tail numbers, blocking location service on phones, etc...makes me laugh.

We are all...ALL OF US...putting our information out there for everyone to see, whether you try to block it or not. If you know where to look, you would be shocked at what is available.
I do investigations for the government (guess that makes me a henchman for the "overlords", as James331 puts it). Give me nothing more than an internet connection (nothing more special than Google...don't need the restricted access government databases), and I'll tell you what car you drive, where you work, and then (for more than 50% of you), show you an actual photograph of your own living room.

Not that you should go crazy posting personal info...but blocking tail numbers etc are not going to come even close to "getting off the info grid"...not any more.

Then you know there is quite a bit you can do to lower your profile; not "Off the grid", for sure, unless you go fanatic, but you can certainly effect counter measures, mis-information, and obfuscate. I'm looking at providing some services in just this area, looking to start-up in about 14 months or so.

 

[dans2992]

Fly using Mode C only, register your plane under an anonymous LLC, and don't let your tail number get out and you can still fly "under the radar" so to speak.

 

[SoCal RV Flyer]

Considering the same data is available from many other places, I don't see that there's a big moral tradeoff. I'm not making anything available that isn't available elsewhere.

Your "blocked" tail number is just an illusion.

Are you telling me that my Star Trek cloaking device doesn't work either?

 

[tawood]

Fly using Mode C only, register your plane under an anonymous LLC, and don't let your tail number get out and you can still fly "under the radar" so to speak.

"Anonymous LLC"? No such thing. Pseudo-name that could be looked up? Sure.

 

[tawood]

Then you know there is quite a bit you can do to lower your profile; not "Off the grid", for sure, unless you go fanatic, but you can certainly effect counter measures, mis-information, and obfuscate. I'm looking at providing some services in just this area, looking to start-up in about 14 months or so.

For the uninformed or low tech, yes.
But I've found most of what YOU don't put out there, others do. Marriage licenses, property purchases/sales/ownership, tax filings, etc all easily found, and good luck stopping those.
Not to mention all the reams of social media crap that YOU don't put out there, but your friends/co-workers/family do...and most times that stuff you don't even know is out there (until you know how/where to look).
Maybe you've already considered this, but I would think this start-up might do better if it included a "info check-up" to see just how bad your info is out there first.

On a side note, what anyone posts on here, or sites like this,is just one example of the tidbits of info you can accumulate. As an example, I've had fun helping a few of my single female friends that are on dating web sites, looking up potential matches that "don't seem right". Armed with nothing more than Google, the guy's screen name, and the guy's photo, I've found gobs of dirt for them.

 

[Lindberg]

"Anonymous LLC"? No such thing. Pseudo-name that could be looked up? Sure.

Plenty of anonymous LLCs. You could even make it offshore.

 

[tawood]

Plenty of anonymous LLCs. You could even make it offshore.

An LLC still needs a member/manager.

 

[Lindberg]

Works just fine in many systems designed just that way.



An excellent example. Public safety agencies are more and more installing dispatch systems (broadcast, promiscuous, and sessionless interoperability is possible as long as a public/private key system is used to transfer symmetric keys and place them in the radios) that are either encrypted on-demand, or continuously.

In fact, my State's shared linked system has had that capability since before the DNC was here for before the first Obama term. It was part of the APCO Project 25 specification two decades ago.

Some things added later for physical security of the radios type problems were "remote wipe/kill" in case someone who shouldn't have gear, got ahold of it. But that was fixed long ago also.

Having been part of an interop project between agencies, the fault was in how to disseminate those symmetric keys to other agencies, but it's been solved in a number of ways, including as mentioned above, wrapping it in PKI. Or trusted people simply handing over a thumb drive to another trusted person, but that was the bad old days.

In aviation, since you can't trust the device (anyone can crack it open and stick an oscilloscope or logic analyzer inside) you'd need PKI with a distributed database and rotating keys that can be "untrusted" by the administrators of the system. None of which is particularly new or novel.

Symmetric keys with the ability to remote kill is probably quite sufficient if a distribution chain through manufacturers was created for control and loading of keys into individual units. The card key idea is the simplest way to do that but too subject to vibration and loss problems for my tastes.

Again, nothing new in RF multipoint systems.

The agencies are tiny, microscopic even, compared to the scope of what we're talking about. And it's "easy" to do a lot of things in a homogenous environment that you control. But even having those public service agencies have trouble communicating with each other when necessary. You want to have a system where you have to distribute physical keys to every pilot in the entire world? And to what end? For the system to work as designed, every system has to be able to decrypt every transmission, so you haven't gained any privacy by encrypting them.

 

[Lindberg]

An LLC still needs a member/manager.

So?

 

[tawood]

So?

So, would you think someone trying to find your plane would get their data all from one source? If someone wants to find it, having an LLC means it takes a few extra steps.
As I said before, for the uniformed or low tech, this works. For those that know how to get the data, it barely even slows them down.

 

[deonb]

The agencies are tiny, microscopic even, compared to the scope of what we're talking about. And it's "easy" to do a lot of things in a homogenous environment that you control. But even having those public service agencies have trouble communicating with each other when necessary. You want to have a system where you have to distribute physical keys to every pilot in the entire world? And to what end? For the system to work as designed, every system has to be able to decrypt every transmission, so you haven't gained any privacy by encrypting them.

You already have to distribute physical ADSB devices to every pilot in the world.

But I don't think Denver was referring to encryption, but rather signing. You don't need to encrypt something to authenticate it.

 

[Sundancer]

T

For the uninformed or low tech, yes.
But I've found most of what YOU don't put out there, others do. Marriage licenses, property purchases/sales/ownership, tax filings, etc all easily found, and good luck stopping those.
Not to mention all the reams of social media crap that YOU don't put out there, but your friends/co-workers/family do...and most times that stuff you don't even know is out there (until you know how/where to look).
Maybe you've already considered this, but I would think this start-up might do better if it included a "info check-up" to see just how bad your info is out there first.

On a side note, what anyone posts on here, or sites like this,is just one example of the tidbits of info you can accumulate. As an example, I've had fun helping a few of my single female friends that are on dating web sites, looking up potential matches that "don't seem right". Armed with nothing more than Google, the guy's screen name, and the guy's photo, I've found gobs of dirt for them.

Roger, check up is part and parcel. . .not looking at the one percenters so much as moderately-high net worth folks, and their professional services providers. I've done some piecemeal stuff for colleagues, nothing too original, but one or two unique twists that defintley muddied the waters. It's kinda fun - you can certainly find my guys, but seperating the wheat from the chaff we generated will add a lot of labor. Some of the big data tools are good for baselining the "as is"; then you can begin introducing the . . .you get the idea!

 

[Lindberg]

So, would you think someone trying to find your plane would get their data all from one source? If someone wants to find it, having an LLC means it takes a few extra steps.
As I said before, for the uniformed or low tech, this works. For those that know how to get the data, it barely even slows them down.

Your Members can be anonymous as well. Or just make the sole member an offshore corp. For most people, just using an LLC with a name that doesn't connect to them will accomplish sufficient privacy. But there are ways of making it truly anonymous. If your attorney can't help you accomplish this, find a new one.

 

[Lindberg]

You already have to distribute physical ADSB devices to every pilot in the world.

No, you don't, hundreds of different vendors do. For Denver's proposal to work, you'd need a central authority distributing keys. And you need a secure way to do it.

But I don't think Denver was referring to encryption, but rather signing. You don't need to encrypt something to authenticate it.

But that doesn't give you any privacy, which is what this thread and the example of PSAs are about...