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DARPA Wants Ideas On Weaponizing Off-the-Shelf Tech (ieee.org)
An anonymous reader writes: The good news is that some of today's most advanced technologies are cheap and easy to find, both online and on the shelves of major chain stores. That's also the bad news, according to DARPA. The defense agency is nervous that criminals and terrorists will turn off-the-shelf products into tools and devices to harm citizens or disrupt American military operations. On Friday, DARPA announced a new project called 'Improv' that invites technologists to propose designs for military applications or weaponry built exclusively from commercial software, open source code, and readily available materials. The program's goal is to demonstrate how easy it is to transform everyday technology into a system or device that threatens national security.
See also this story about transforming into weapons items commonly found in the purportedly secure area of U.S. airports.
I mean they wouldn't then use this data to show that everyone needs backscatter scan followed by a full body cavity search would they? Or that they need more of our money to pay for additional people to guard all the dangerous objects in stores? Or that they must have access to a list of everything everyone buys everywhere to cross reference with their collection of communications? Nah they wouldn't be doing that.
"The program's goal is to demonstrate how easy it is to transform everyday technology into a system or device that threatens national security" and who among the populace has the capabilities to do so.
for readily available materials which will be 'tracked' in the future. please submit your ideas so we can watch you, too.
How about mounting an automatic weapon in the back of a pickup truck?
love is just extroverted narcissism
Low tech, cheap off the shelf weapon. A sharpened pencil. Surprised they allow pencils into schools in these days of fear mongering.
As opposed to just buying a gun?
The average "criminal" is NOT going to re-write code or anything like that. S/He will use the same tried-and-true methods that have proven successful for so many years.
This is STUPID.
it has already been done in the largest terrorist cyber attack ever:
The Windows 10 upgrade.
It's pretty easily possible for an amateur to put together their own cruise missle, encrypted communications that admit to no theoretical methods to break them if they're used correctly, spread spectrum radio that you can't tell is there, various sorts of jammers for GPS, phones, etc., various bombs and poisons.
Not that I really want to tell this to Congress.
Bruce Perens.
Weaponized off the shelf tech:
- Rubber band guns
- Flying shrieking monkeys http://www.amazon.com/Flingshot-Slingshot-Flying-Screaming-Monkey/dp/B000OEUUG6
- Hoverboards http://crimeblog.dallasnews.com/2016/03/suspect-allegedly-flees-on-hoverboard-after-shooting-man-in-northwest-dallas.html/
Can be used to suffocate somebody.
Will I need to get a license for mine someday?
I'm happy to sell them a $500 laptop with Kali Linux for $10,000,000 or whatever the going rate is for over-inflated defense contracting. Where do I sign up?
They certainly have some ideas about what is and isn't threatening to air travel regarding everyday items
How about a brick? You can pick it up and throw it at someone's head.
...what can be done with just a few off-the-shelf elements. The entire contents of the periodic table must be confiscated from the American public. It's the only way we can be protected from the turr'ists among us!!
They'll use it to cause havoc for sure.
A weapon doesn't have to be lethal to humans.
Here's an example: install systemd on an adversary's Linux system. If the adversary's Linux system is anything like my Debian systems were when systemd was installed on them, there's a very good chance they won't boot properly. The adversary may not be physically harmed, but the adversary sure will be angry!
Here's another example: upgrade the adversary's Firefox installation. If the adversary's Firefox experience is anything like my Firefox experience, an upgrade is nearly a guaranteed way of getting a much worse experience. The adversary may not be physically harmed, but the adversary sure will be angry!
It's just a line. "Yeah, we're worried about terrorists and criminals using off-the-shelf stuff. We have no interest in it ourselves. Yeah, that's the ticket!"
Wars are extremely expensive - they have ruined many states - and I see this as an attempt to lower costs at the defense department.
Just my cynical 200 cents (inflation).
Legos thrown on the floor.
Beginner: * Break off a branch from a tree. This is called stick. Hit someone with it. Advanced: * Produce a straight staff from a tree. File down the point of one end, or attach a flint or metal pointy traingle to one end. This is called a spear. In close quarters you may stab someone with it in a jabbing motion. At a distance, you may throw it. Be warned, if you missed you just armed your opponent with a spear. Expert: * Produce a straight staff from a tree and fashion into a bow. Use the sniwes from an animal you slayed using your club or spear and fashion a string you can use on your bow. Produce minature spears that you can use to shoot from this bow. Bows make excellent weapons to be used at a distance before your opponent can get into throwing range of a spear or melee distance if they have a club. As you can see, Trees are very dangerous and can be used as weapons. We should cut them all down.
give someone a windows 7 PC and tell them the windows 10 upgrade will break it. that's psychological warfare on the cheap.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Stop making mass murder on behalf of the government 'legal' and stop calling it 'collateral damage' and maybe you won't have to worry about so-called terrorism.
...now they can compile a list of stuff to regulate.
Popcorn machine? Background check required
Baby oil? Background check required
Antacids? Background check required
You get the idea.
turn off-the-shelf products into tools and devices to harm citizens or disrupt American military operations.
You mean like the 8 - 10" chef knives one can find at any yard sale or flea market? Or do they mean the rolls of aluminum foil which can be cut into ribbons then sent via bottle rocket to land across power lines and short them out?
I'm presuming I should be expecting a knock on my door in the very near future.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Why do I get the feeling that someone at DARPA just watched Iron Man 3...
Minne-snow-da: Winter is comming...
are already deadly weapons. What do they plan to do about that? Confiscate them?
There was a story about some guy who figured out how to gang consumer microwave magnetrons on a resonant waveguide that resulted in a coherent beam. This was about 5 years ago- and not a peep since.
love is just extroverted narcissism
Ideas to weaponize off the shelf items:
Idea 1:
1- Purchase Handgun
2- Purchase ammunition
3- Combine ammunition with handgun
This idea combines two off-the-shelf items (handgun and ammunition) to create a weapon.
Idea 2:
1- Purchase Shotgun
2- Purchase ammunition
3- Combine ammunition with shotgun
This idea combines two off-the-shelf items (shotgun and ammunition) to create a weapon.
I'm working on a different idea involving rifles, but I haven't sorted out the details yet
MacGyver, to be specific.
I suspect that one of these choices is incorrect. Correct.
... across the St. Lawrence River with a Trebuchet made of balsa wood bought from the nearest hobby store count?
Oh wait, I forgot, we are making nice with Canada now. Make that the Rio Grande.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Come to think of it, I haven't seen Chuck Norris in a while...
There's N0oo way they would ever lock you up if sent them a bunch of well though out plans on how to make devices capable of hurting large amounts of people with readily available materials. They would never do something like that. It's not like they'd go after people just for googling Pr3ssur3 c00kers and f3rt1lizers in the same day (google it if you're brave), maybe my tinfoil hat is too tight but I still don't even like typing those words.
There are a lot of off the shelf weapons.
"I've invented a pill that gives worms to ex-girlfriends."
Bye!
the mythbusters need a job also get that macgyver to help.
before I participate in this little exercise, I'm going to need full immunity.
I can hop in the car and buy propane, gasoline, lighter fluid, matches, and a few other simple things I won't mention. It wouldn't cost me very much to build one helluva an incendiary device. Timothy McVeigh did a really big bang with fertilizer and fuel oil... and it's my understanding that the fertilizer sales are monitored a bit more now... but if I really wanted to mess shit up, I'm pretty sure I could do it with purchases that wouldn't attract much attention. The fact that people generally don't do this, to me, says something about most people being generally good and simply wanting to live their lives.
This is kind of shady, they want people to weaponize common tech so they can go ban everything citing national security threats. Something about this just sounds funky to me.
load up artillery shells with IoT crap, and fire it at enemies. voila, weaponized!
I should add it seems popular these days to pack the corners with bacon bits. don't know why. perhaps our enemies don't have crackers and Cheez Whiz to provide a suitable resting spot.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Buy a CNC machine, start mass producing AK47s.
IT'S A TRAP!
seriously, it's like saying "Hey, I'm a dangerous person, I'm totally the guy you need to watch!"
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
Just put your lithium ion battery on overload and leave it in the aft lavatory, you know, since you can't smoke anymore
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Take any object with a CPU in it and elect it as the President of the U.S. And there you go. Dumb and dangerous, just like Obama.
A quad has a carrying capacity measured in grams or ounces. A Ford can carry 2,000 pounds.
A quad could deliver a small firework, though.
Override safety switches on a microwave oven and run it with the door open. Could cause havoc with a lot of nearby electronics. Would be interesting to see how far away GPS would be overwhelmed. Before you try the experiment, I am sure it is illegal to operate a transmitter this powerful without a license.
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pini...
Sounds like cell phone jammers might be a good place to start, maybe set them up in key places and have some kind of remote control, to turn them on all at once. Don't stop with cell phones, start jamming every kind of communications you can, then move on to fiber backbones with some wire cutters, and there's probably a way to down remote, unmonitored power lines with little effort.
Beware of the Redittor who loans you a Sharpie.
Any engineer worth their salt could disrupt a city for under $500;
- A hammer and nails can disable emergency response vehicles.
Self lighting charcoal and a road flare can set a house on fire.
Combine the two, and you can burn down a city.
- Most cities have a small number of major traffic arteries that could be shut down with a similar number of people armed with rocks.
- Drop a bag of flour on the freeway and call in a chemical spill.
And there are far, far more effective things I can think of that I'm not willing to post on a public forum.
Once you start to think about how vulnerable we are, you realize that terrorists must be extremely rare.
So what's laying around an airport? Who do they think will do something?
What? You don't understand? Things are not weapons until someone uses them... People are weapons... who?
Well, anyone with 2 or more semesters in chemistry ( Heisenberg, high-school teachers, biology and pre-med students ).
Anyone with industrial electricity or electronics experience ( Heathkit comes to mind, engineers, physicists, ham radio people...).
Anyone who decides to learn any of the applied technology fields in the local library or online....
Not programmers. Not Housewives or house husbands. Not Liberals. Not Conservatives. Not SJWs. Not Lawyers. Not english, history teachers... None of these unless they have the background in chemistry/electronics/electricity/hydraulics.
Or decide to learn.
Whatever they learn from their research will only scratch the surface. McGyver Lives!
They want to start tracking odd combinations.
A reporter bought a bunch of fertilizer after the Oklahoma City blast, just to show how easy it would be.
He set off alarms and overtime work in a couple states.
The government tried to bill the reporter for the overtime that the FBI put in.
I never heard about it later.
This would cause more of the same. You bought a few pvc pieces and hair spray and potatoes. Hmmm.
You bought whatever Linda Hamilton got in Terminator to make C4 hmm.
More reasons they want to ban paper money.
The sooner it becomes clear that you cannot defend against all the possible types of weapons that people can create the sooner we will be force to address the root causes of people wanting to harm others in the first place.
Talk to the guy at http://terminalcornucopia.com/ he makes weapons out of stuff sold in airport shops located after the security checkpoint.
Too easy.
I'm hoping (though I could be wrong) that they don't mean obvious and common sense uses that they already know about. They're (I hope) looking for something innovative and clever that they aren't prepared for, so they can, you know, prepare for it.
Imagine a drone or model airplane with a piece of tungsten welding rod on board. The wire would be less than one ounce but put in the path of any jet and being sucked into an engine would probably bring down most planes. A drone carrying a strand of copper wire and dropping it over major power lines could create havoc and frankly, even a slingshot can be used to shoot a wire over a line as can a bow and arrow. And even those little tire rippers that the resistance used against the Nazis could easily be deployed in rush hour traffic causing horrific traffic jams and screwing up the functions of major roads. One guy on a motorcycle could slowly drop 100 or more of those while riding along. Imagine trying to get 100 tow trucks through a huge traffic jam. And then there is the deliberate transport of non-native species in our waterways. For example, there is a battle right now trying to keep foreign carp out of the great lakes. Any fool can carry a few in a bucket and insert them anywhere. Zebra muscles could be deliberately put into many waterways. Down south, the Kudzu plant is an invasive species that is hard to control as are water hyacinths. And there are many more ways people can screw up nations. Technology can be as simple as a plastic bucket to carry fish or as complex as a really nasty computer virus. The way to fight this stuff is to have very happy citizens. When people are put under stress by economics or laws they tend to do nasty things and they really can not be stopped.
Great, now everything will be restricted by ITAR.
Reminds me of the "best political joke" contest in the Prawda. First prize: 25 years vacation in Sibiria.
I'm pretty sure the first prize in this one would be a trip to Cuba.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Go to the contest and use all the off-the-shelf devices there at once :v
What about a fixed-wing RC model? Add a small barreled weapon to it and automated targeting. You can reuse the thing multiple times, saving money in the long run.
Ezekiel 23:20
If you light a man a fire, he will be warm for a night. If you light a man on fire, he will be warm for the rest of his life.
How about you brainwash people through an authoritarian system so they do whatever their payed off congress tells them too? Oh wait you are already doing that.
How about you hijack religious thinking in order to use innocent people as soldiers? Oh wait you are already doing that.
How about you put bombs in drones and blow up people in the way of valuable resources? Oh wait you are already doing that.
How about you sell arms to radical groups in order to avoid an increase in pay to average citizens? Oh wait you are already doing that.
Pretty clever ;)
Humans can be weapons too. :P
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I hope the winners get some anonymity or a new identity....
Your best bet (with no security clearance or access to encrypted email) is just sending your ideas to the White House and hope for the best.
And thus my sig on the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity, and also this essay by me: ... irony. :-) "
http://www.pdfernhout.net/reco...
"There is a fundamental mismatch between 21st century reality and 20th century security thinking. Those "security" agencies are using those tools of abundance, cooperation, and sharing mainly from a mindset of scarcity, competition, and secrecy. Given the power of 21st century technology as an amplifier (including as weapons of mass destruction), a scarcity-based approach to using such technology ultimately is just making us all insecure. Such powerful technologies of abundance, designed, organized, and used from a mindset of scarcity could well ironically doom us all whether through military robots, nukes, plagues, propaganda, or whatever else... Or alternatively, as Bucky Fuller and others have suggested, we could use such technologies to build a world that is abundant and secure for all.
So, while in the past, we had "nothing to fear but fear itself", the thing to fear these days is ironcially
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Mistrust is expensive. That's how I've heard it put elsewhere. And just look at unstable areas of the world to see that. More and more money goes into guarding (e.g. armed guards, steel walls and window shutters, armored cars, constant surveillance) and less and less into producing stuff worth guarding. In the same way that the natural ecology provide many vital services to the global economy (like air and water recycling), peace and general satisfaction saves us a lot of money (not just military expenses but day to day costs ranging from locks to insurance premiums).
Although, there are always some who see profit in causing unrest of all sorts -- thus "War is a Racket". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
See also "The Abolition of Work" by Bob Black:
http://www.whywork.org/rethink...
"I don't suggest that most work is salvageable in this way. But then most work isn't worth trying to save. Only a small and diminishing fraction of work serves any useful purpose independent of the defense and reproduction of the work-system and its political and legal appendages. Twenty years ago, Paul and Percival Goodman estimated that just five percent of the work then being done -- presumably the figure, if accurate, is lower now -- would satisfy our minimal needs for food, clothing and shelter. Theirs was only an educated guess but the main point is quite clear: directly or indirectly, most work serves the unproductive purposes of commerce or social control. Right off the bat we can liberate tens of millions of salesmen, soldiers, managers, cops, stockbrokers, clergymen, bankers, lawyers, teachers, landlords, security guards, ad-men and everyone who works for them. There is a snowball effect since every time you idle some bigshot you liberate his flunkies and underlings also. Thus the economy implodes."
And, for some humor on this, the "Bee Watcher Watcher" story by Dr. Seuss:
http://www.drseussart.com/illu...
In general, I agree the best way to prevent disasters is to have happier citizens (and healthier, more capable, and more optimistic ones). A basic income for the exchange economy may be one way towards happier citizens (and with a BI people on the edge have more to lose by criminal actions, too), but so could be an improved gift economy, improved subsistence technologies like 3D printing, and/or improved government planning through better democratic participation. I discuss those here and why they are a better answer to mass unemployment compared to other options:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/beyo...
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
From: http://web.archive.org/web/201...
===
Now come back to the present while I demonstrate that the identical trust placed in ordinary people two hundred years ago still survives where it suits managers of our economy to allow it. Consider the art of driving, which I learned at the age of eleven. Without everybody behind the wheel, our sort of economy would be impossible, so everybody is there, IQ notwithstanding. With less than thirty hours of combined training and experience, a hundred million people are allowed access to vehicular weapons more lethal than pistols or rifles. Turned loose without a teacher, so to speak. Why does our government make such presumptions of competence, placing nearly unqualified trust in drivers, while it maintains such a tight grip on near-monopoly state schooling?
An analogy will illustrate just how radical this trust really is. What if I proposed that we hand three sticks of dynamite and a detonator to anyone who asked for them. All an applicant would need is money to pay for the explosives. You'd have to be an idiot to agree with my plan--at least based on the assumptions you picked up in school about human nature and human competence.
And yet gasoline, a spectacularly mischievous explosive, dangerously unstable and with the intriguing characteristic as an assault weapon that it can flow under locked doors and saturate bulletproof clothing, is available to anyone with a container. Five gallons of gasoline have the destructive power of a stick of dynamite.3 The average tank holds fifteen gallons, yet no background check is necessary for dispenser or dispensee. As long as gasoline is freely available, gun control is beside the point. Push on. Why do we allow access to a portable substance capable of incinerating houses, torching crowded theaters, or even turning skyscrapers into infernos? We haven't even considered the battering ram aspect of cars--why are novice operators allowed to command a ton of metal capable of hurtling through school crossings at up to two miles a minute? Why do we give the power of life and death this way to everyone?
It should strike you at once that our unstated official assumptions about human nature are dead wrong. Nearly all people are competent and responsible; universal motoring proves that. The efficiency of motor vehicles as terrorist instruments would have written a tragic record long ago if people were inclined to terrorism. But almost all auto mishaps are accidents, and while there are seemingly a lot of those, the actual fraction of mishaps, when held up against the stupendous number of possibilities for mishap, is quite small. I know it's difficult to accept this because the spectre of global terrorism is a favorite cover story of governments, but the truth is substantially different from the tale the public is sold. According to the U.S. State Department, 1995 was a near-record year for terrorist murders; it saw three hundred worldwide (two hundred at the hand of the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka) compared to four hundred thousand smoking-related deaths in the United States alone. When we consider our assumptions about human nature that keep children in a condition of confinement and limited options, we need to reflect on driving and things like almost nonexistent global terrorism.
Notice how quickly people learn to drive well. Early failure is efficiently corrected, usually self-corrected, because the terrific motivation of staying alive and in one piece steers driving improvement. If the grand theories of Comenius and Herbart about learning by incremental revelation, or those lifelong nanny rules of Owen, Maclure, Pestalozzi, and Beatrice Webb, or those calls for precision in human ranking of Thorndike and Hall, or those nuanced interventions of Yale, Stanford, and Columbia Teachers College were actually as essential as their proponents claimed, this libertarian miracle of motoring would be unfathomable.
Now consid
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
You mean, the HD camera and mounts on your quadcopter weigt grams? Typical photo-film quadcopter can lift kilograms.
I am reminded of this gentleman's demonstration of a $5,000 dollar cruise missile that used off-the-shelf parts and a simple, easily built modern take on the highly efficient pulse-jet that powered the German V1. The weapon was guided by GPS, but the most interesting part of the project to me was how it handled flight software. Real-life cruise missiles undergo extensive airframe testing in wind-tunnels coupled with fine-tuned software; the software "knows" precisely what the effect will be of any control input; i.e. how far it will pitch, yaw or roll the missile. To get around those difficulties, this fellow simply programmed his software to be self-learning; using inertial sensors to self-calibrate control input. The software "learned" how its inputs affected the missile.
I find it interesting that this guy came up with this design back when "drones" were still military toys and civilian model airplane pilots were just starting to wonder what all the fuss was about. Nowadays an obsolete smartphone collecting dust in the back of your sock drawer has a built-in GPS, inertial sensors, and battery/processor power sufficient to serve as the brains of such a weapon - and if it doesn't, a Rasberry Pi is pretty damn cheap these days. All these people worried about a quadcopter drone carrying a few pounds of nail-wrapped C4 into a playground would shit themselves if they knew about this.
Yes, the first hit in Google for "drone camera" is 58 grams.
http://myfirstdrone.com/tutori...
Consumer fireworks for 4th of July are up to 1,000 grams. (500 grams "presumed composition weight", which is half th the total weight.)
I have this dual-use screwdriver. That idea I give you for free to show that this is the Real Deal.
In order to learn the secrets of my patented, trademarked and copyrighted Screwdriver Sharpening System, I will require a fat contract and an ironclad Non-Disclosure Agreement!