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War Driving Version 2.0
asv108 writes: "There is an interesting article in the New York Times about the popularity of wireless cameras from X10 and how easy it is to easedrop on the feeds with relatively inexpensive equipment from up to a 1/4 mile away." I wonder if they're doing the things the X10 ads imply they might be doing.
Wasn't this the point of all those annoying X10 ads? :)
i think that if it wasnt for the ads, the idea of eavesdroping with the x10s might not be so prevelent. imho
Don't you just love how uninformed the general population is?
After X10 spends all this money selling such an easy to use product, some dumb ass journalist stumbles accross the fact that
[GASP] These things are really easy to use!!!
And they work so well, they are really easy to use!!! by anyone!!!
OH MY GHOD!!! It's one channel garage door openers all over again!!
I wonder if they're doing the things the X10 ads imply they might be doing.
Yeah, because hot chicks in skimpy outfits love guys with nothing better to do than fuck around with obscure protocols.
That's one of the many reasons RMS gets all the ladies, right?
--saint
I bet they'll suddenly be more car accidents, with bored students driving round trying to pick up 'dodgy' webcams
They're again pr0n driving wouldn't have the same 'ring' to it (oops excuse the pun)
wonderful.
and of course, no one is running to plug the legal hole.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
l. slashdot12345
p. slashdot12345
in case you need it
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
The ads are actually made from images the company got by eavesdropping on their customers. Ha ha.
I wonder if they're doing the things the X10 ads imply they might be doing.
You've got it all wrong; X10 is meant to protect and safeguard your family. All those half-dressed women in the ads are simply burglars, removing their bulky clothing so they can slither in through your window and steal your stuff.
If only it was true...
Was this discovered by people looking for 802.11b APs around the city, encountering interfearance and pulling out an X10 camera reciever?
-Rusty
You never know...
There used to be such a thing as war dialling: setting your modem to call many 800 numbers sequentially, looking for a modem response. Collect the numbers, hack around with em, yada yada yada....
War driving version 1 is about 802.11 (wifi) - people drive around big cities and overhear the traffic broadcast by banks, and so on.
this is v.2
hope that's clear
WarDialing - dialing a large number of phone numbers to see which numbers are to computers.
WarDriving (v1) Driving through communities looking for open 802.11b AccessPoints.
WarDriving (v2) like v1, but looking for X10 cameras.
You never know...
Call 1-800-564-8982
/. editors should be very familiar with it...
Press 2, then 5228. Enjoy!
I'm sure all
War Driving is the term used from when people would (and still do) drive around with wireless networking equiptment and see how many places' networks they can see/play with along the way.
The term comes from "War Dialing" which is pretty much no longer in practice. It was when phreakers would dial numbers in order until one picked up with a modem answer, kind of like brute force password cracking. Once a modem answered, most of the time people just tinkered with things to see what that particular phone number had in it.
For more information on war dailing, see the movie "War Games" (this is a CLASSIC 'hacker' movie).
I would assume that you do the same thing with X10 stuff, just hook it up to a laptop and drive around until you got a signal. Hence, war driving 2.0.
Find Escorts, Strippers, Massage Parlours, Swingers
It is really easy, but no matter how many I set up around my house I just can't seem to find any hot half-naked women lounging around for me to spy on.
Maybe I just need to buy more cameras...
------
Today's Top Deals
In the nearby town of Madison, from the parking lot of a Staples store, workers could be observed behind the cash register.
I doubt it, but I wonder if the resolution was good enough to read the credit card numbers of the customers, when they put it on the counter.
maybe they said 'easedrop' to imply how much 'ease' you could do it with? =] I doubt it. But you never know
What?
I thought the ladies come with the cameras. I guess I will cancel my order for those 10 X10 cameras.
I should have thought over how they would get 10 hot females shipped via courier.
that's not encrypted can be intercepted. Just like scanning for cordless phones, this is not really that hard. If you don't want someone to see/hear personal information you're transmitting, ENCRYPT it! Of course, most consumers either don't know enough about encryption to use it or just don't care. Then again, if you've ever gotten bored and scanned the wireless phone frequencies you know how inane and boring most conversations are. I'm betting the average "nanny-cam" would be just as boring :)
...More grainy porn featuring ugly nerds humping their bovine "webmistresses"....Yeesh. At $1.39 a gallon, i've got better things to do with a tank of gas than to drive around looking for things I don't really want to see.
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
"There's no corresponding lobby out there protecting people from digital surveillance," he said.
Digital eavesdropping? The cameras send an analog signal just like a TV station does. Sheesh..
Or you could just order a reciever from X10 for $49. Maybe he was buying the 6 camera pack with eagle eye motion sensors and the auto vcr kit for the $250.
If you order from X10, what ever you do, make sure you give them a disposable e-mail address because they will send you so much spam, you will long for the days when all you received was viagra and porn e-mails.
-Bingo
This is not informative; it's copyright infringement.
If someone were to alert the NY Times that people are moderating up copyright infringement, I wonder what would happen to Slashdot?
...with out registering with The New York Times:
8 &ncid=68&e=1&u=/nyt/20020413/ts_nyt/nanny_cam_may_ leave_a_home_exposed
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=6
Orange
In the case of the XCam2, the cameras transmit an unscrambled analog radio signal that can be picked up by receivers sold with the cameras. Replacing the receiver's small antenna with a more powerful one and adding a signal amplifier to pick up transmissions over greater distances is a trivial task for anyone who knows his way around a RadioShack and can use a soldering iron.
:^)
It looks like the obvious answer is to ban Radio Shack from selling soldering irons.
I bought an X-cam about a year ago to catch neighbors dumping garbage on our property. The camera was mounted upstairs, pointing out toward the street. Imagine my surprise when I turned on the receiver for the first time, and the image I saw was..a view of my own house from across the street! Apparently another neighbor had bought an X-cam, and was operating it pointed in our direction. (This was not entirely coincidence since I'd mentioned the garbage cam to them a few weeks back, but still.. ) This was a distance of about maybe 100 feet. (Also, for some reason, our camera signal did not interfere with theirs.)
A man, a plan, a canal: Suez!
Here's How XCam2 Works, and
X10 cameras and Video Senders use the following frequencies: 2.411GHz, 2.434GHz, 2.453GHz, 2.473GHz. So something like this (the Icom IC-R3) might work, as it can quickly scan the frequencies you're looking for and lock on one once a signal is found.
Also, from the XCam2 manual: "Refer to the setup and operating instructions that came with the 2.4 GHz Video Receiver, Model VR31A or
VR36A (sold separately) to set up the Receiver.". In other words, one only needs to buy said on of the suggested receivers for $50-$90 and scan those four channels manually.
Are you telling me that wireless devices advertised as inexpensive and aimed at home consumers don't have super-secure encryption built in?? I am shocked and amazed! I mean, If I'm paying 50 bucks for a wireless color video camera, I'd expect some government-level security on those things!!
Next thing you tell me, it will be easy to eavesdrop on cordless phones and walkie-talkies!!
In the nearby town of Madison, from the parking lot of a Staples store, workers could be observed behind the cash register.
Anyone whos been to a Staples knows that there are NEVER any employees at the registers!
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
I believe it's "eavesdrop", i.e. to hide under eaves to spy.
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
Precisely what people have been complaining about!
i've been trying to read the NYTimes article but those damned X10 ads keep popping up!!
If this is Heaven I'm bailin out! I cant tolerate this ol tin-tub, so fulla trash and rats...
So, someone might go driving by and spot the transmitted image of my mailman? Unless, of course, the ham operator neighbor's keying up again, and obliterating the signal. Or the other neighbor's using his 2.4GHz cordless phone. Or the neighbor on the other side is trying his 802.11 gateway again.
I have only one question for anyone who's actually trying this - why bother? The picture generated by an XCam is *crap,* and useless for anything but really grainy and poorly-saturated "surveillance" (and half the time it's useless for that, too!)
The CMOS module that the XCam uses is crap. The optics are plastic (or really crappy glass), and generate some really funky chromatic distortion, so I replaced the module with a Panasonic CCD module. Much better picture, but you still have to deal with the really nasty interference.
Specialization is for insects. - R.A.H.
i'm using mozilla and i don't get any pop up ads.
free (as in mp3s) electronic music
next time you see the ad click on it and go to their site. on their page theirs a link that will give you a cookie that prevents the ads from apearing. id tell you exactly what the site is and where the thing on the site is, but since i dont see the ads anymore, i cant find out. i think its on their faq, but im not sure. i just know its there.
And also smugly cynical. But WTF. Some of the more tightly wound Slashdotters really do need to know this stuff!
Heck, I'm still waiting for a good program to use with OSX to do WarDriving with 802.11b. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any decent software out there that'll do anything with my AirPort card.
My own pointless vanity vintage computing page
As for the cameras themselves they operate in the 2.4GHz ISM band. That band has always been crowded because it doesn't require a license from the FCC to operate in. There has always been information available to anyone that took the effort to listen in. Only now that it has become popular with the public and you have a chance to see a naked nanny has anyone even noticed.
Let them eavesdrop on the X10 cameras. We all know that the real danger lies in the alien mind rays that my tinfoil hat stops.
I had a funny sig but a large corporation trademarked it and sued me into poverty.
Karma: Positive. Mostly affected by the lack of a karma joke in your sig.
I wonder if they're doing the things the X10 ads imply they might be doing.
Spying on the neighbors? Probably.
And you thought you could spy without anyone watching...
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
The R3 is an all-band receiver with built-in video, and can receive broadcast TV, ATV, and wireless video, including 900Mhz and 2.4Ghz transmissions.
Unfortunately, the 2.4Ghz range only covers three of the four XCAM frequencies, and the receiver is deaf as a post above 2Ghz, even with a good antenna.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
from what they say when you go to that page...
i don't read slashdot anymore.
I have a lot of professional wireless video equipment. We do all of our transmits at my work in the 2.4ghz range. It's kind of funny, when a certain local TV station does live remotes from the downtown area, we get their signal on our antennas, reminiscent of finding a backhaul feed in my B.U.D. satellite days.
Anyways, along with receiving equipment, I have a lot of high-gain Yagi directional antennas. I know the antennas would be good for this sort of thing, but is the x10 receiver just a standard 2.4ghz video transmitter? Should I be able to pick up x10 cameras with my receiver, or even worse, can our broadcasts be picked up by people sitting at home with a cheap x10 receiver?
People can set up their own mini TV stations. Most of it will probably be crap, but then that's the same case with the web letting everybody publish idiotic opinions like this one.
___
The ends are ape-chosen, only the means are man's. -- Aldous Huxley
Somebody's gotta hack up some sw to do this-- don't make me go out and ACTUALLY BUY HARDWARE!
The horror!
Get to work! I'll be checking freshmeat tomorrow!
-- I speak only for myself.
Does anyone have any alternate sources for the equipment sold on X10.com? Several years ago, before they even started their pop-up campaign, I placed an order from these guys and called three weeks later to ask where my order was (and why they charged my credit card as soon as the order was placed weeks before). The sales rep I talked to was such a flaming asshole that I vowed never to do business with them again. So, does anyone else (reputable) sell this equipment?
chris
KOMPRESSOR mp3 downloads
If I remember right, The Screen Savers (TechTV) had a little blurb about surfing the area to pick up on stray x10 signals. Good idea, expose this flaw to the world. A quick search of their site turned up nothing. Maybe someone else could provide a little insite. I could be wrong. ~ops
Urgo: "I want to live. I want to experience the universe and I want to eat pie!"
Jack: "Who doesn't??"
You mean I've been missing out on this kinda thing? When did this come about? I always wondered what my 40gb's of porn was for.
http://lists.dachb0den.com/pipermail/bat/2002-Apri l/000202.html
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
Sorry to get all pedantic but what kind of a word is 'easedrop'? Surely you mean 'eavesdrop'?
:)
This is the part where someone points out that it's actually a clever play on words as regards how 'easy' is it to 'eavesdrop' and I've missed the point completely
This may be the most informative thread on slashdot.
In this thread, in just 5 minutes, I learned:
* How to disable X10 pop-up ads (but only for 30 days)
* That masturbation has a wide range of uses
* How to generate a random login for the NY Times website
Though it is unfortunate that almost nothing in the comments had any direct relevance to the topic at hand.
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
The solution is simple, an EM hardened house.
:(
By building wire mesh into all the walls and turning the house into a Faraday cage, most of the radiated signal can be blocked and also make the house more impervious to EM disturbance.
If you were really paranoid you can also do the windows, but if you still want light to get in, all you could do is use real fly-wire (not the cheap plastic crap) and figure out some way to ground it, probably by just grounding the frame.
The only disadvantage is if you want to go outside and use you cordless phone while gardening or some such. But otherwise, it lessens the chances of somebody snooping you X10, cordless phone and even TEMPEST (totally obliterates the risk if you go hardcore).
It also has the advantage of cleaning up the airwaves outside for 802.11 comms. It would make everybody happy, except for those trying to gather TEMPEST data, but there are other alternatives for them anyway.
Just my $A0.005 worth, damn Aussie dollar
After a month of driving around the Nutmeg State with a Wavecom receiver hooked up to the trusty portable boob-tube, the signals intercepted were either broadcast TV signals from Wavecoms being used as a "VCR Rabbit" (remember those circa 1990s that operated on 902-928 Mhz?), a lot of parking lots, and the occassional driveway. All in all, the 2.4 Ghz. ISM band is becoming yet another garbage band with all the cordless phones, 802.11 LANS, microwave ovens, and Wireless Cameras.
I've had more fun putting the transmitter on an R/C car and driving it around the back '40, or aiming it at the bird feeder. I think eventually I'll have it watch the dog run. Any Connectucut War Drivers (2.0) are more than welcome to help me babysit my Keeshound. I'll even give you a QSL card!
Just as an FYI, wireless video is found at places other than 2.4 Ghz. I've seen stuff on 433 Mhz. (mostly ham radio "ATV" stuff, but not always), UHF TV (Chs 14-69), and of course 902-928 Mhz.
Intercept New England