The New York Police Department is spending $500 million on a new radio system it calls more reliable and secure. But the public will no longer be able to monitor what officers are doing minute to minute.
Went down a research rabbit hole wondering about doing security research on these encrypted radios. Looks like you’d have a pretty hard time finding a legal way to do it considering it’s illegal to transmit encrypted per FCC rules. So though you can get the hardware on eBay for 100 bucks, even beginning to test for flaws is already a gray area. Probably have to rig something up to avoid transmitting at all. Plus a faraday cage? Modern solutions use AES256, so a major flaw in crypto implementation on top of a failure to rotate keys is the only likely avenue. Even if you found a vulnerability, reporting seems like it would be highly risky with the legal murkyness and arrest happy authorities.
Went down a research rabbit hole wondering about doing security research on these encrypted radios. Looks like you’d have a pretty hard time finding a legal way to do it considering it’s illegal to transmit encrypted per FCC rules. So though you can get the hardware on eBay for 100 bucks, even beginning to test for flaws is already a gray area. Probably have to rig something up to avoid transmitting at all. Plus a faraday cage? Modern solutions use AES256, so a major flaw in crypto implementation on top of a failure to rotate keys is the only likely avenue. Even if you found a vulnerability, reporting seems like it would be highly risky with the legal murkyness and arrest happy authorities.