
If NSA Can Hack WiFi 8 Miles Out – Implications for Commercial Use - giardini
https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ubergizmo.com&#x2F;2013&#x2F;12&#x2F;the-nsa-has-a-device-that-supposed-can-hack-your-wifi-from-8-miles-away&#x2F;<p>Assume that the NSA, as they claim, can hack wifi 8 mile out. Then it must be possible for a network of enhanced wifi routers to act as a wide-area network similar to now-defunct Metricom&#x27;s Ricochet system except far more robust, distributed and less costly. Such a network, by reducing the role of local ISPs, could reduce unwanted monitoring (by NSA and others).<p>I am asking for suggestions about software&#x2F;hardware enhanced stacks for such a &quot;New and Freer Internet&quot;?
======
Zenst
8 miles away, if cities, now that would be impressive beyond belief. 8 miles
away, small town on the side of a hill, sure.

Though a drone 8 miles up, would we see or hear that?

Also are the NSA as curtailed about legal transmit power as as mear citizens?
As being able to boost transmit power, yes 8 miles reasonably focused and
drowning out everybody else, would not be subtle.

Now when they can do it with low-orbit satellites, an array of those
beamforming - oh it maybe fantasy, but gets me onto one safeguard.

Should wifi have radio latency checks? By that, ringfence via radio latency
how far away somebody can connect - even if they can see or transmit from 8
miles away, if you had protection that ignored anything over 20 meters away,
you would totally be able to lock those connections down. That would need to
be at chipset level, though with a good resolution ping, you could augment
security and with a more granular ping, would be able to tell how far away any
connected wifi device is. So technically possible with hardware already and
just a software feature that could be added and remove anybody over a certain
distance from even holding a connection upon the network over wifi.

~~~
rl3
> _Now when they can do it with low-orbit satellites ..._

Some of the better speculation I've come across suggests American ELINT
satellites have deployed antenna spans measuring _hundreds of feet_.

That might explain why grabbing cellular transmissions right out of the air
without requiring terrestrial resources has been a thing for at least a couple
decades now.

When you have virtually unlimited budget, you can do a lot of things thought
previously impossible.

------
mytailorisrich
If you have the correct antennas and possibly amplifiers on both ends you can
established a Wifi link over hundreds of miles (if you have line of sight).
Basically, if you can see the other device you want to communicate with at
building level with your eyes then it's not too difficult to establish a Wifi
link with it using off the shelf parts.

On the other hand, intercepting a 'normal' Wifi signal (e.g. me browsing HN at
home using omni antennas and standard Tx power) from 8 miles away is quite a
feat and I doubt that they can do that at will. Probably only in specific
scenarios (e.g. line of sight in a not too noisy environment), if at all.

~~~
omarchowdhury
> If you have the correct antennas and possibly amplifiers on both ends you
> can established a Wifi link over hundreds of miles (if you have line of
> sight). Basically, if you can see the other device you want to communicate
> with at building level with your eyes then it's not too difficult to
> establish a Wifi link with it using off the shelf parts.

Any resources you can share to do this?

~~~
nonamenoslogan
I can't speak to hundreds of miles, but I built a Wifi bridge that went about
1.75 miles across a cow pasture with center-pivot sprinklers using a pair of
WRT-54G routers, DD-WRT, and some yagi/panel antennas from Amazon about 10
years ago. Total price was under $300 and speeds of 11mb were all we went for
as it was just feeding a PC for browsing and time-card punches in a shop
across the pasture from the office.

It ran happily for nearly 6 years before being replaced with a packaged kit of
antennas and POE injectors that advertised 54mb over 2-3 miles seamlessly for
around the same price.

If you had a pile of old 802.11b gear and the time and gumption, I'd think you
could build something like this for sub-$50 at this point.

------
duxup
I think with all technical things there's a lot of context we don't know.

I don't doubt it could be done in some specific situations ... not so much 8
miles in other situations.

No doubt a contractor or someone would be happy to take the development money
for '8 miles' ;)

------
eberkund
I don't know about 8 miles, but you can greatly extend your WiFi range with an
external WiFi antenna and a large dish.

------
8bitsrule
Depends on how many people are micro-waving (at 2.4 GHz) their supper at the
time.

