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Jailbreak Turns Cheap Walkie-Talkie Into DMR Police Scanner

Posted by timothy on from the more-than-meets-the-eye dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Last Shmoocon, famous reverse engineer Travis Goodspeed presented his jailbreak of the Chinese MD380 digital handheld radio. The hack has since been published at GitHub with all needed source code to turn a cheap digital radio into the first hardware scanner for DMR digital mobile radio: a firmware patch for promiscuous mode that puts all talk groups through the speaker including private calling. In the U.S. the competing APCO-25 is a suite of standards for digital radio communications for federal users, but a lot of state/county and local public safety organizations including city police dispatch channels are using the Mototrbo MotorolaDMR digital standard.

3 of 82 comments (clear)

  1. Why is Police band unencrypted? by gmack · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If you can monitor things you shouldn't, the problem is with the insecure communications system not with the hacked walkie talkie.

    1. Re:Why is Police band unencrypted? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Do we really need to know every car that the police pull over?

      Yes, I don't think the police should be able to pull people over secretly. Do you not understand why public oversight of the police is so important?

  2. The "Read More" link... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    A nice simple way for the new owners to demonstrate their good intentions:

    Please can we have the "Read more..." link back for all stories and not just on the polls ?

    Thanks.