
A $200 privacy device has been killed, and no one knows why - nkurz
http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/07/a-200-privacy-device-has-been-killed-and-no-one-knows-why
======
jgrahamc
I'd bet that this wasn't shut down for "national security" reasons but
probably because the device wasn't what it was hyped to be. This has happened
before, see Haystack[1]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haystack_(software)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haystack_\(software\))

ProxyHam seems like a neat combination of existing technologies, but it was
just a Raspberry Pi + WiFi + 900Mhz interface. Probably was fun to make, but
not necessarily something that deserves a lot of hype by Wired etc. Maybe the
developer decided it wasn't worth all the trouble.

~~~
smnrchrds
I lived through the aftermath of 2009 Iranian presidential elections. This
brings back many memories, none of which are good. I simply cannot fathom how
someone could play with the emotions (and potentially lives) of a nation, all
for personal gain, for fame and greed ...

~~~
tptacek
What do you mean?

~~~
dredmorbius
This set of stories from WNYC's On the Media captures the arc quite well.

You scarcely need to read (or listen to) the stories, though I recommend you
do.

IN IRAN, NEW SOFTWARE TAKES ON INTERNET CENSORSHIP Transcript Friday, May 14,
2010 [http://www.onthemedia.org/story/132777-in-iran-new-
software-...](http://www.onthemedia.org/story/132777-in-iran-new-software-
takes-on-Internet-censorship/transcript/)

IS HAYSTACK TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE? Transcript Friday, September 10, 2010
[http://www.onthemedia.org/story/132909-is-](http://www.onthemedia.org/story/132909-is-)

AFTER HAYSTACK: SPEECH AND PRIVACY ONLINE Friday, September 17, 2010
[http://www.onthemedia.org/story/132917-after-haystack-
speech...](http://www.onthemedia.org/story/132917-after-haystack-speech-and-
privacy-online/)

------
blhack
I don't understand the sortof not-saying-it-but-maybe-saying-it implications
that the big bad government had to "shut this down".

It was a 900mhz wifi router with some wishy washy "security" speak slathered
on top of it to gain attention.

If you want a 900mhz wifi router, here:
[https://www.ubnt.com/airmax/nanobridgem/](https://www.ubnt.com/airmax/nanobridgem/)

Go nuts. In fact, look at all of the other really cool stuff that ubiquity
sells!

My guess would be that this talk was either pulled because the author got in a
little over their head, or the organizers of the event realized that this was
just going to be a talk about a DIY wifi access point.

BTW, proxyham guy: COOL PROJECT! Wifi access points are _really fucking cool_
, and building your own is really fucking cool too. Everybody should build
one.

~~~
MichaelGG
Ubiquiti stuff is great. Only low cost stuff I found that penetrates the
Faraday cage that is Central American housing. (They're concerned about
earthquakes, so they fill every wall with rebar and concrete. I need two long-
range APs to cover my not-big house.)

Downside is the admin system needs Java and runs as a service you browse to
(and pretty sure there's a mongo dependency in there). Suppose it makes more
sense in a dedicated office environment.

~~~
nathancahill
Yeah, exactly. Just installed a Ubiquiti setup in Guatemala between a tree on
a mountain top (4G USB modem with high-gain antenna, solar panel, RouterBoard)
to my parents house 2km down in the valley (where there isn't cell phone
coverage).

Works great! Had to use a high power flashlight at night to get the angle
perfect, but it sure beats satellite internet once we got it dialed.

~~~
nly
You should photograph and blog something about this. It sounds super cool.
Bravo

------
rpcope1
I think this device is way, way overhyped. If you are at the point where you
need a device like this to get away from some government agency (or
terrorists, or whomever) you expose yourself to so much risk just planting a
802.11 to 900 MHz bridge it's not even funny, and then if you have someone who
is remotely competent is tracking you, I would imagine they'd having something
like some SDRs or a couple of spectrum analyzers and notice unusual traffic on
one of the few unregulated frequency bands, and would have no trouble at all
triangulating you (believe me, the FCC is excellent at this). Would your
normal law enforcement officer/agent from $THREE_LETTER_AGENCY always do this?
Probably not, but if they're not going that far, you're probably safer just
connecting in a normal fashion and doing things like MAC spoofing, or for
added distance, just using a good 802.11 transciever with a excellent dish or
yagi antenna. The 900 MHz bridge planted at the WiFi AP just screams "I'm
doing something probably really bad", and the name of the game here is "keep a
low profile."

~~~
jack9
> I think this device is way, way overhyped.

Based on what?

> believe me, the FCC is excellent at this

Any HAM radio operator or junior electrical engineer is excellent at this.
Triangulation isn't magic.
[http://www.homingin.com/beginr.html#toc](http://www.homingin.com/beginr.html#toc)

~~~
rpcope1
> Based on what?

Based on the fact this got any media coverage whatsoever. Idea is cool, from
the technical perspective of bridging from one frequency range to another (and
there's obviously money to be made in it, as the equipment he used is
manufactured by Ubiquiti for something similar to this purpose), but really is
a very poor way to try and keep a low profile or make yourself less
traceable/make an easier escape.

> Any HAM radio operator or junior electrical engineer is excellent at this.
> Triangulation isn't magic.
> [http://www.homingin.com/beginr.html#toc](http://www.homingin.com/beginr.html#toc)

Right, I think it drives home just how relatively straightforward it is, not
to say the FCC has a monopoly on the technique by any standards. I had
mentioned the FCC, as this tends to be their domain, and I've been on the
wrong side of their triangulation once in my youth. ;)

------
2ton_jeff
ErrataSec hit it in one IMO:

[http://blog.erratasec.com/2015/07/proxyham-conspiracy-is-
non...](http://blog.erratasec.com/2015/07/proxyham-conspiracy-is-
nonsense.html)

~~~
jonah
"An even funner talk, which I've long wanted to do, is to do the same thing
with cell phones. Take a cellphone, pull it apart, disconnect the antenna,
then connect it to a highly directional antenna pointed at a distant cell
tower -- several cells away. You'd then be physically nowhere near where the
cell tower thinks you are."

That would be interesting.

~~~
contingencies
If it became known to be deployed, what's the bet some Erlang hacker upgrades
the cell tower firmware to detect probable directional antennae?

How would that potentially work? Well, I'm no radio engineer but I know it's
possible. Normally you receive signals of varying strength as users move
throughout your cell. I'm fairly certain that sub-cell positioning metrics are
already developed on the change between these various known signal states and
directions. One would simply pick outliers (eg. with constant signal strength,
or constant direction).

~~~
lawnchair_larry
Why Erlang?

~~~
DiabloD3
I assume he was referring to how a series of popular telephone switches from
Ericsson had their software written in Erlang.

The towers themselves would just be a mishmash of DSPery and C/C++, however.
Probably, anyways.

------
partiallypro
Perhaps it was just vaporware to begin with, and the creator knew this sort of
action would create more of a stir than releasing the "schematics" or delaying
it constantly. Not that I really trust government, but it seems FAR more
likely that it was just vaporware.

------
bandless55
>ProxyHam, according to Errata Security CEO Rob Graham, was little more than
the combination of a Raspberry Pi computer and a ... 900 MHz bridge from a
company called Ubiquiti Networks...

I work at Cambium Networks
([http://www.cambiumnetworks.com/](http://www.cambiumnetworks.com/)), one of
Ubiquiti Network's biggest competitors on this exact type of radio.

They provide you with a network bridge between two radios. The same effect
could be reproduced with 2.5 mi of ethernet cables, except it's wireless. This
is definitely nothing new. You still need a connection to the Internet at the
other endpoint. How this secures you, I'm not sure. Also these radio's are
line-of-sight and the antenna is directional. You could effectively follow the
direction the radio is pointing at and find the 2nd radio installation.

From my perspective, this is a useless tool. It _physically_ secures your
computer. Plus ProxyHam is extraneous, these radio's work with minimal
configuration. ProxyHam sounds more like a wireless broadband radio installer
than a privacy device.

------
mintplant
WIRED raises one possibility:

> Online anonymity tools certainly aren’t illegal. Tools like VPNs have
> allowed users to obscure their IP addresses for years. The anonymity
> software Tor is even funded by the U.S. government. But it’s possible that
> secretly planting a ProxyHam on someone else’s network might be interpreted
> as unauthorized access under America’s draconian and vague Computer Fraud
> and Abuse Act.

[http://www.wired.com/2015/07/online-anonymity-project-
proxyh...](http://www.wired.com/2015/07/online-anonymity-project-proxyham-
mysteriously-vanishes/)

~~~
qq66
Don't know about the CFAA as a whole, but it's perfectly sensible for placing
a repeater on someone else's network without permission to be illegal.

------
PhantomGremlin
When I first read about this idea I wasn't crazy about it, because it would be
so easy to determine the source and destination of the 900 MHz signal. One of
the comments in this article raises the same point: HFDF, huff-duff, high-
frequency direction finding. This is WWII era stuff.

Instead of RF, I think a point to point IR laser link would make much more
sense. It has a very significant limitation in that it would require line of
sight (with maybe 1 judiciously placed reflector). But the advantages would be
that 1) nobody would be expecting it and 2) it wouldn't be continuously
announcing itself to the world.

~~~
socceroos
...with the distinct disadvantage that the laser is pointing directly at
you...

Why not just jump on someone's wifi connection while spoofing your MAC?
Directional antenna client-side for distance. Problem solved.

~~~
mirimir
Using a standard ~2.4HGz parabolic dish with a Ubiquiti Bullet M radio, I've
hit strong APs at ~5Km.

~~~
socceroos
Stab in the dark here (given your use of metric): do you also happen to use a
common flaw in APs that use the tail section of an SHA1 hash in their SSID?

~~~
mirimir
If you're speculating about my identity, no.

If you're twitting me about style, I just like "Km" more than "km" :) I mean,
"KB" and "Kbps" are pretty standard, no?

~~~
profmonocle
KB=kilobyte, Kb=kilobit.

~~~
mirimir
Yes, and ...?

Some say "kB" and "kb", rather than "KB" and "Kb".

But maybe k=1000 vs K=1024?

~~~
ectoplasm
Yeah, 1 Km does not mean 1000 meters, it doesn't mean 1024 meters really
either, it's just written as 1 km. For some reason, the metric system is only
capitalized for mega, giga, and tera... only mega conflicts (with milli),
nothing else is t or g. K, M, T, G seems more consistent than k, M, T, G.

------
emcrazyone
"900MHz radio frequency so the owner could connect from up to 2.5 miles away
from the source of the Internet connection. As a result, even if someone
tracked down the location of an IP address, the user wouldn't automatically be
discovered."

triangulation seems to be a weakness if you can separate it out with other
stuff transmitting in that range which I think is quite easy to do with the
right hardware.

~~~
ryanmarsh
For some reason people just can't let go of 900Mhz as some kind of NLOS data
transmission panacea. The truth is radio is HARD.

------
tlrobinson
Sort of related: are there any actual hams in SF (probably SoMa, Dogpatch,
Potrero, or maybe Mission, given my location and aspect) interested in trying
to setup a (unencrypted) Broadband-Hamnet (BBHN, formerly HSMM) mesh network?

I've got a couple 2.4Ghz nodes but I'd been willing to try other frequencies.
Ubiquiti gear is pretty cheap and nice.

[http://www.broadband-hamnet.org/](http://www.broadband-hamnet.org/)

~~~
rdl
I'd be interested; will have a roof at 2nd/townsend at some point late this
year. More interested in satcom, though.

~~~
tlrobinson
What satellites are you interested in?

I've got a handheld VHF/UHF yagi which is kind of fun (ISS, SO-50), but a
rotor and a roof to put it on would be a lot nicer.

------
dpeck
This happens every summer with Defcon, non-issue all around, and yet every
summer people act like the sky is falling when a talk is pulled.

------
crystaln
Without evidence to the contrary, let's stick with the most probable
explanation: The device didn't work.

------
zw123456
The missing link here in my mind is what is on the other end of the 900Mhz
link? Someone has to have an internet connection on the other end of it. It is
not clear who would want to provide that and pay for it or how many users you
could get on that link at the same time across the ISM band which is
inherently noisy because cordless phones, baby monitors and all kinds of other
unlicensed devices use it, 2.5 miles seems pretty optimistic. The best
anonomizer I have found is simply finding an open WiFi hotspot and connect to
it remotely. I live in a fairly urban area and if you use a directional high
gain parabolic antenna you can connect to any number of open hot spots from
afar and it is almost impossible to figure out where you are unless someone
has a triangulation equipment set up ahead of time.

------
beedogs
I'm sure the creator knows why, but for some reason, he isn't talking...

> For the record, I asked Caudill about getting a NSL, Caudill would only
> answer, "No comment."

Because I reckon that's exactly what happened. Paranoid US government steps in
as usual.

~~~
jedberg
That's exactly how I would respond if I had failed to build a security device
that lived up to its hype.

~~~
vonklaus
That is reasonable. I just feel like rather than have this sort of streisand-
esque effect, if that really was the case, why not just say it. If you see
sites like outincrediblejourney[0] this industry relishes failure nearly as
much as success. Sure it would be a ding on the ego but in the Def Con
community being interdicted by the NSA on a project you were working on is
probably worse than not having fort knox level security on some prototype
device you were going to present.

[0][http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/](http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/)

~~~
jedberg
He'll be a martyr in the DefCon community if they think the NSA stopped him.

------
vonklaus
There is a ton of FUD, but seriously? It is quite odd, Caudill responded to
questions indicating that it had nothing to do with intellectual property or
the FCC. Also the tweet said "immediately canceling talk" without explanation.
One would think he would have said something about deadlines slipping or
another conflict when canceling the talk. An NSL is probably not the case, but
I also find it difficult to believe he just couldn't get it done in time given
the utter lack of explanation and the media now moving in.

------
ised
I would like to see some Ubiquiti gear that boots from removable media so I
can use my own software to control it, similar to Soekris or PC Engines.

It is the Ubiquiti "OS" that keeps me away.

~~~
jlgaddis
At least some of the Ubiquiti gear can run OpenWRT.

~~~
ised
Would you believe I want to run something else other than Linux?

------
olefoo
It sure sounds like someone got a nastygram with a gag order.

Which if your America is Norman Rockwells and has first amendment protections,
etc. seems like it would be _prima facie_ unconstitutional.

But there is that thing in our current system where being a test-case just
drains your finances as well putting you at risk of criminal prosecution; even
if the order is blatantly wrongful.

If someone is issuing such orders we can only hope that they are currently
about to be doxed by whistleblowers.

------
harry8
While we're discussing what is likely, just keep in mind that you can't use a
2011 understanding of what is an "implausible" action by government. No matter
how implausible it seems, we've _all_ been wrong about what they wouldn't
plausibly do before, sadly.

------
gnu8
I think it's pretty clear that they sold out.

~~~
ascendantlogic
I don't think that's clear at all. I think that's your jaded viewpoint and a
shot in the dark.

~~~
socceroos
is it fair to say that _all_ of the speculation in this thread is merely shots
in the dark?

~~~
ascendantlogic
I will grant you that, yes.

------
gbachik
Lol the best part? You'll never find the guy ;p (Because he has the device)

