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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? :)
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
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.
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...
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...
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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.
I guess that explains the 17 year old whose civic has been parked on my yard for the past month.
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
...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?
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.
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.
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?
If you know what you're doing, you can just edit the cookie to expire in 2099
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
What I ment was, you could change the experation date if you knew what you were doing, 2099 was an arbitrary example that I gave little thought to. You're right of course.