Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login
Origin Of Wireless Security: The Marconi Radio Hack Of 1903 (2017) (hackaday.com)
94 points by fortran77 on June 17, 2019 | hide | past | favorite | 13 comments



The “security” came from the fact it was tuned to receive a specific frequency. Earlier radios were not very selective on which frequencies they would accept.

The main benefit was not actually security but a reduction in congestion. Spewing interference out randomly is not an efficient use of airwaves.


Except that the one in the demo wasn't, enabling the hack:

It was discovered that the receiver that Fleming had been using was not, in the phrasing of the time, syntonic. It wasn’t tuned to a specific frequency, excluding all others, because a syntonic receiver would have been too large to use in the demo.


Discussed at the time (2017 that is, not 1903): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13779504


A nicely-done video on the topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sP2qqMegNKA


Is there a typo in the Latin? “Qui vult decipi, decipatur”

I Google’d it and got this:

https://m.openjurist.org/law-dictionary-ballentines/qui-vult...


Probably pig Latin. Quid volit decipere, decipatur would be better. "Qui vult" definitely looks like Old French.


Huh? "Qui" and "vult" are both classical.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/qui#Latin

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/vult#Latin

And "decipi" is the passive infinitive ('to be deceived') and "decipiatur" is the passive subjunctive ('let him be deceived').


I think I read somewhere that English language legal settings have a history of a peculiar dialect of French mixed in, owing to the Norman history in Britain.


Norman, and Napoleon. The landed aristocracy has moved back and forth across the channel for a thousand years. They also fought countless wars against, and a couple alongside, each other. That creates a common culture that bleeds into all language. It happened in law, but also greatly in medicine and other sciences.


Should have [2017] tag.


Macaroni?


Spelling corrector failure?


It's hard to implement security in spaghetti code.




Join us for AI Startup School this June 16-17 in San Francisco!

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: