Jeeze, calm down. Yes, the satnav in my truck also has rudimentary inertial guidance. It has an electronic compass and is aware of the truck's speed, and doesn't have to deal with altitude. It also tends to be "sticky" to roads, assuming that you must be on the nearest road even if the guidance indicates you're driving through a field. (And sometimes it gets it wrong.) As a current military contractor, you know about accumulated error in inertial guidance systems -- it just takes longer and is more difficult to draw off. It then becomes a question of escalation, until cost/reward becomes unfavorable for one side or another.
But why are you so shocked that someone would spoof GPS? TFA talks about hijacking a drone. What part of "hijacking" do you think might be legal?
First, chargers and cables have been separate for some time for devices with micro-USB. Hell, the generic power strip I just bought for the headboard in the master bedroom has two conventional USB charging ports. That isn't the issue. The issue is that micro-USB is a commodity product, and Apple doesn't do commodity. The second point is really the only point, that Apple got around "micro-USB is required on devices" by providing a micro-USB to whatever-apple-uses adapter.
Good thing we can have adapters. In the EU, micro-USB is required on devices so they will have to keep using the old connector until the law catches up with th enew one...
Unlike Lightning, this is just a connector for USB 2/3, not a whole new interface. A dumb, cheap adaptor should suffice. (Unlike Lightning to 30-pin adaptors which are basically tiny protocol droids translating between the two.)
Another difference is that USB cables and chargers are commodity items, and often chargers are completely separate from cables these days, having the full size USB connector on them, hence taking the same data cable you would use to plug into a computer. (So the charger is still useful even if the cable changes.) Instead of a trendy white cable you can only get from the device manufacturer, it's just a cable, used by hundreds of different devices, as common as dirt.
Kinda reminds me of the efforts in the 50's and 60's to ban that-there rock and roll in the US and England, because, you know, it leads to bad things. There may even be a common cause in disaffected youth.
The counter to *that* is inertial guidance. But realistically, Amazon and most government agencies probably won't have the budget for that.
An off-the-shelf IMU costing less than $100 as a completed product gives you enough information to tell if your position is shifting in the way that the GPS claims, with a little software trickery. You can certainly detect something like that, and then start retracing your steps. One or two retries and the drone just flies home.
I wasn't aware that IMUs had gotten that cheap. (I haven't done this stuff in many years.) But that just takes us to the next level, where IMU accumulated error and gradual GPS draw-off techniques are employed. More difficult, but still possible.
I'm not interested in people who do it for laughs. (Although, there will probably be some who do it just to see what kind of chaos they can create. The same morons who point laser pointers at commercial aircraft.) As soon as the profit/risk ratio is favorable, someone will do it, either to acquire the cargo, acquire the craft itself, or prevent the craft from doing whatever it was trying to do. Just pointing out that there are known techniques.
Ok, so hang on, In a previous life as a military contractor, I used to do this with 1980's technology. This (TFA) sounds like a cheap, brute force approach, that actually works fairly well. You overwhelm the subject with a much stronger signal, and depend on the receiver's automatic gain control to limit the amplitude, putting the "real" control signal down in the noise. You then have the drone's full attention.
The usual countermeasure is to encrypt the control signal. Then, you can still do a DOS (in today's terminology), but you can't get the drone to obey your commands.
The counter-counter measure to this is to break the encryption so you can control the craft. Flash back to those supercomputers that hobbyists were building by clustering lots and lots of game consoles. Just saying'.
Then, there's counter-counter-counter measures like hopping between frequencies and so forth, but for every technique there's a counter-technique, and I suspect computers have gotten fast enough to analyze tricky incoming signals and mimic them fairly quickly.
Someone brought up GPS -- Amazon's little copters can't be hacked because they're autonomous, using GPS for navigation. Well guess what -- GPS is just another signal. As we learned in the middle east, it is possible to spoof those signals and get a drone to land in a place it didn't expect.
The counter to *that* is inertial guidance. But realistically, Amazon and most government agencies probably won't have the budget for that.
Optical guidance? (and optical surveillance in general) Green lasers with automated tracking and aiming triangulating by noise, or emitted RF, or visual recognition. Anyone with robotics experience should be able to at least theorize a solution.
You're right. So... let me think... Got it. You drive a 1969 GTO, with the emitter in the trunk. The police would have to find some older cars to give chase. Wow, this is starting to sound like a Mad Max movie.
Same. There's nothing quite like having minced meat that tastes (and smells) rotten forced down one's throat to give you a firm position on meat for the rest of your life, is there?
I firmly believe that my mother is an undiagnosed anosmia sufferer. She tended to choose ingredients by texture rather than flavor, with about as good a results as you would expect. For instance, when she discovered that my girlfriend (now my wife) and I were vegetarian, she was trying to figure out how to adapt her spaghetti recipe for vegetarians. (Which is trivial -- just leave the meat out of the sauce, done. Optionally add eggplant or spinach, but just leaving out the meat is fine.) She was looking looking looking... for something that resembled meat for the sauce. She decided on some really elderly brown sugar she found in the cupboard, because, well you're ahead of me by now. Man that was nasty.
And then, there was the time she decided to do an egg casserole for breakfast. The recipe called for corn flakes for texture. She didn't have any, but she did have some sugar frosted flakes...
Can't say, but I can state positively that all of my customers who are currently on a d-link will be upgraded. It's in my best interest, as I'd have to repair the damage if they get compromised.
There's something to be said for blending into the background, being "down in the noise", not being whomever they're looking for. Pay cash when possible. (It's still allowed, although maybe not for too much longer.) Be less distinctive in appearance. Build up a really boring persona. Don't make it worth anyone's time to follow you.
Practice safe computing. I think this is probably more important than CCTVs everywhere. Don't open or click on anything unless you know exactly what it is. If you must do porn or warez, do it on a virtual machine, not the same one on which you do your banking and pay your utilities.
Beware of social engineering. It works so well that I would be really surprised if it were not used as a surveillance tactic.
>... is wonderful evidence for the fact that this is a device that will not only fail, but be a hilarious accessory for retro-tech humor in about ten years time.
I agree with the second part. At some future time we will all look back at this with the same wry expression that some of us look back at 70's polyester leisure suits.
As to the first part, I do not think the product will fail. Any brief skim of facebook pages shows that there is too much demand for exposing your food to the public. So clearly the product will succeed, at least for awhile.
I can see where coming into an establishment wearing Google Glass is this century's equivalent to walking in accompanied by a 60 minutes crew. You may not be filming, but how would anyone know?
But really, there is a solution. Google just needs to build the device into the eye. Then, there wouldn't be any way to tell, except perhaps by the RF energy. And who doesn't go around exuding some kind of RF these days?
Sure, all those 1 Billion people with ARM powered Android device agree with you. If anything Surface convinced people that Microsoft's place is only on the desktop (and that is still debatable).
I'm not talking about what I believe, I'm talking about what must be going through the heads in Microsoft executive row.
Slashdot Mirror
Jeeze, calm down. Yes, the satnav in my truck also has rudimentary inertial guidance. It has an electronic compass and is aware of the truck's speed, and doesn't have to deal with altitude. It also tends to be "sticky" to roads, assuming that you must be on the nearest road even if the guidance indicates you're driving through a field. (And sometimes it gets it wrong.) As a current military contractor, you know about accumulated error in inertial guidance systems -- it just takes longer and is more difficult to draw off. It then becomes a question of escalation, until cost/reward becomes unfavorable for one side or another.
But why are you so shocked that someone would spoof GPS? TFA talks about hijacking a drone. What part of "hijacking" do you think might be legal?
First, chargers and cables have been separate for some time for devices with micro-USB. Hell, the generic power strip I just bought for the headboard in the master bedroom has two conventional USB charging ports. That isn't the issue. The issue is that micro-USB is a commodity product, and Apple doesn't do commodity. The second point is really the only point, that Apple got around "micro-USB is required on devices" by providing a micro-USB to whatever-apple-uses adapter.
Good thing we can have adapters. In the EU, micro-USB is required on devices so they will have to keep using the old connector until the law catches up with th enew one...
Didn't Apple get an exception to that?
Unlike Lightning, this is just a connector for USB 2/3, not a whole new interface. A dumb, cheap adaptor should suffice. (Unlike Lightning to 30-pin adaptors which are basically tiny protocol droids translating between the two.)
Another difference is that USB cables and chargers are commodity items, and often chargers are completely separate from cables these days, having the full size USB connector on them, hence taking the same data cable you would use to plug into a computer. (So the charger is still useful even if the cable changes.) Instead of a trendy white cable you can only get from the device manufacturer, it's just a cable, used by hundreds of different devices, as common as dirt.
Kinda reminds me of the efforts in the 50's and 60's to ban that-there rock and roll in the US and England, because, you know, it leads to bad things. There may even be a common cause in disaffected youth.
The counter to *that* is inertial guidance. But realistically, Amazon and most government agencies probably won't have the budget for that.
An off-the-shelf IMU costing less than $100 as a completed product gives you enough information to tell if your position is shifting in the way that the GPS claims, with a little software trickery. You can certainly detect something like that, and then start retracing your steps. One or two retries and the drone just flies home.
I wasn't aware that IMUs had gotten that cheap. (I haven't done this stuff in many years.) But that just takes us to the next level, where IMU accumulated error and gradual GPS draw-off techniques are employed. More difficult, but still possible.
I'm not interested in people who do it for laughs. (Although, there will probably be some who do it just to see what kind of chaos they can create. The same morons who point laser pointers at commercial aircraft.) As soon as the profit/risk ratio is favorable, someone will do it, either to acquire the cargo, acquire the craft itself, or prevent the craft from doing whatever it was trying to do. Just pointing out that there are known techniques.
Ok, so hang on, In a previous life as a military contractor, I used to do this with 1980's technology. This (TFA) sounds like a cheap, brute force approach, that actually works fairly well. You overwhelm the subject with a much stronger signal, and depend on the receiver's automatic gain control to limit the amplitude, putting the "real" control signal down in the noise. You then have the drone's full attention.
The usual countermeasure is to encrypt the control signal. Then, you can still do a DOS (in today's terminology), but you can't get the drone to obey your commands.
The counter-counter measure to this is to break the encryption so you can control the craft. Flash back to those supercomputers that hobbyists were building by clustering lots and lots of game consoles. Just saying'.
Then, there's counter-counter-counter measures like hopping between frequencies and so forth, but for every technique there's a counter-technique, and I suspect computers have gotten fast enough to analyze tricky incoming signals and mimic them fairly quickly.
Someone brought up GPS -- Amazon's little copters can't be hacked because they're autonomous, using GPS for navigation. Well guess what -- GPS is just another signal. As we learned in the middle east, it is possible to spoof those signals and get a drone to land in a place it didn't expect.
The counter to *that* is inertial guidance. But realistically, Amazon and most government agencies probably won't have the budget for that.
Optical guidance? (and optical surveillance in general) Green lasers with automated tracking and aiming triangulating by noise, or emitted RF, or visual recognition. Anyone with robotics experience should be able to at least theorize a solution.
Wow, the next few years are going to be *fun*.
You're right. So... let me think... Got it. You drive a 1969 GTO, with the emitter in the trunk. The police would have to find some older cars to give chase. Wow, this is starting to sound like a Mad Max movie.
Third thought: Assuming the police have the device, they are likely to deactivate themselves being closer to the transmitter...
That sounds like an episode of Reno 911.
How's this?
I get a 404 on both links, but yes, point made. I need a new sig.
Now, that's funny. Mod up.
I wonder what it would do to a helicopter.
First thought: When shielding is criminal, only criminals will have shielding.
Second thought: This would be a really cool way to deactivate police cars that might be chasing you.
Same. There's nothing quite like having minced meat that tastes (and smells) rotten forced down one's throat to give you a firm position on meat for the rest of your life, is there?
I firmly believe that my mother is an undiagnosed anosmia sufferer. She tended to choose ingredients by texture rather than flavor, with about as good a results as you would expect. For instance, when she discovered that my girlfriend (now my wife) and I were vegetarian, she was trying to figure out how to adapt her spaghetti recipe for vegetarians. (Which is trivial -- just leave the meat out of the sauce, done. Optionally add eggplant or spinach, but just leaving out the meat is fine.) She was looking looking looking... for something that resembled meat for the sauce. She decided on some really elderly brown sugar she found in the cupboard, because, well you're ahead of me by now. Man that was nasty.
And then, there was the time she decided to do an egg casserole for breakfast. The recipe called for corn flakes for texture. She didn't have any, but she did have some sugar frosted flakes...
Since we're going to kill to eat, then why not opt for the "mmm, tasty" end of the spectrum?
Apparently, eating should involve suffering. Which just goes to show, my mom was way ahead of her time.
Can't say, but I can state positively that all of my customers who are currently on a d-link will be upgraded. It's in my best interest, as I'd have to repair the damage if they get compromised.
There's something to be said for blending into the background, being "down in the noise", not being whomever they're looking for. Pay cash when possible. (It's still allowed, although maybe not for too much longer.) Be less distinctive in appearance. Build up a really boring persona. Don't make it worth anyone's time to follow you.
Practice safe computing. I think this is probably more important than CCTVs everywhere. Don't open or click on anything unless you know exactly what it is. If you must do porn or warez, do it on a virtual machine, not the same one on which you do your banking and pay your utilities.
Beware of social engineering. It works so well that I would be really surprised if it were not used as a surveillance tactic.
But in general, just be uninteresting.
You have high quality friends. I recommend you keep them.
Others are not so lucky. There are people who would do what you describe only because it was the next cool thing.
Kinda like waiting in line to upgrade a 4s for a 5, but not as boring.
> ... is wonderful evidence for the fact that this is a device that will not only fail, but be a hilarious accessory for retro-tech humor in about ten years time.
I agree with the second part. At some future time we will all look back at this with the same wry expression that some of us look back at 70's polyester leisure suits.
As to the first part, I do not think the product will fail. Any brief skim of facebook pages shows that there is too much demand for exposing your food to the public. So clearly the product will succeed, at least for awhile.
I can see where coming into an establishment wearing Google Glass is this century's equivalent to walking in accompanied by a 60 minutes crew. You may not be filming, but how would anyone know?
But really, there is a solution. Google just needs to build the device into the eye. Then, there wouldn't be any way to tell, except perhaps by the RF energy. And who doesn't go around exuding some kind of RF these days?
Sure, all those 1 Billion people with ARM powered Android device agree with you.
If anything Surface convinced people that Microsoft's place is only on the desktop (and that is still debatable).
I'm not talking about what I believe, I'm talking about what must be going through the heads in Microsoft executive row.
I like this answer. At some point you have to just walk away.