OneTrikPony wrote:

Good points. I'm going to play Devil's Advocate in support of my argument that the rules make it too easy.

*Cracks knuckles* Alright, let's do this! :D

OneTrikPony wrote:

1. It's true that Jamming doesn't stop anyone from transmitting but If I step on someone else's signal then no one in My range can use that frequency at at that modulation. So, If I want to mug or murder average joe without him or his muse screaming about it over the mesh It will take me 12 seconds to get that done. If I'm using a throwaway ecto, (which I should cause while I'm jamming I just cliped major bandwidth out of Everyone's mesh and they'll B p!553d), then I allready have twice the signal range that average joe has and No One Can Hear Him Scream. 2. Good point but other transmitters are a dyme a dozen. I don't have to use my mesh inserts. See above.

This only works if your jammer has longer signal range than his, or if some area of his signal range does not cover a receiver outside of your range. Otherwise, there is the very real possibility that your victim will still get an emergency message out. Plus, habitat policing services may monitor the airwaves for jamming signals, as my guess is that they would be illegal. If this is the case, then your jamming signal is itself a big alarm to the cops that something is going down.

OneTrikPony wrote:

3. Also a good point. except that microwave / laserlink is rarely the only spectrum used for Comms. I reference the [url=http://www.informationweek.com/news/security/attacks/232300666]US Drone Captured by Iran[/url] which obvously had a microwave link to a satalite that didn't help at all.

Actually, the inverse may be true in this case. Apparently an Iranian scientist claims that the reason the drone was captured was because of a GPS hack... several weeks ago, our military had announced that a virus was found on their drone network, but they did nothing about it as it seemed harmless. This virus may have been the means by which they were able to capture the drone. So in this case, the weakness may have been security holes in our GPS network and programmed interdependency.

OneTrikPony wrote:

4. Assuming a single emitter. My position could be obfuscated by using one or several of my drones to sniff and then attack the signals i want to jam. Referring back to point 2. My drones have transducers and AI. They should be able to transmit a jamming signal and still listen to me, as long as I have two devices, one to talk to them and one to jam with.

It depends. If they are transmitting universal jamming signals, then they may not be able to communicate with you. If they are transmitting selective signals, it is a possibility, but the jamming signals can be used to triangulate each of your drones, and their connection to you can be used to pinpoint your location. You simply added another step in the process. Plus, this adds quite a bit of equipment into the equation, and makes jamming expensive to utilize effectively. In a way, that balances it's effects.

OneTrikPony wrote:

With an eye to developing a house rule to model jamming in greater depth I've been studying up. I think my issue may not be with actually Jamming the signal but sniffing it in the first place. In a world were even simple radio devices use Frequency Hopping, Spread Spectrum, Frequency modulated radio transmission in a meshed network I don't understand how it's possible to nail down the frequencies you want to jam at all.

In the same way that transmission protocols and hardware have improved, I have no doubt that jamming methodology and tactics have improved as well. A transmission that cannot be jammed is also a transmission that cannot be intercepted... so remember that before you work out a means to balance out the mechanics.

OneTrikPony wrote:

Of course this is correct in a simple system like ship to ship short range radio (do they even use that anymore? I suppose so re. the miniature farcaster and radio boosterhardware) But, I'm not so sure this would be the case in a mesh network of cellular band comms. (Mesh inserts have very high data bandwidth and a range of about 1KM so I think were talking about the same cellular radio bands we use today) I think it might depend on how dense is your mesh cloud . In a situation where nodes are sparse and distant the jamming of one node is apparent and damaging to the whole network. In a situation of moderate density or urban density it's not going to be apparent at the outside of the device range that one node is being intentionally jammed because the farther the signal of one node traveles the more it gets unintentionally stepped on by other legitimate nodes with stronger signals. (I'm talking "inverse Squares law" here.) So it doesn't matter so much if you distort the signal for *every* ear within range as long as you cover the closest ones. Your Transmission footprint doesn't have to match *exactly* Of course authorities are going to come down hard on anyone who gets rude with mesh bandwidth. Universal or Barrage jamming is the electronic equivalent of blowing an airhorn in church. There's hardly any reason to ever do that. But, the mesh is self generating and self healing so cutting out a small protion of the bandwidth is not always obvious. I also think that Universal jamming doesn't require an Interfacing test to Scann. You don't care what signal your killing you just set it to transmit on all frequencies of one or several bands. That's one reason why I think signal jammer should use, if not require, special hardware. If you use a mesh registered device like your ecto or inserts then it's obvious that the device at "this IP" is generating an attack on "this channel". If you use a transmitter that isn't part of the mesh then it's activity can't be tracked, just triangulated. I think it's highly unlikely that the [url=http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/10/virus-hits-drone-fleet/]Keylogger virus at Creech[/url] is related to the iranian GPS spoof. I've provided the original wired article. There was another I read quoting the "airforce personnel" thinking that the keylogger may be the airforce spying on their own personnel. I'll try to find it later.

Signal range probably isn't completely relevant within an urban environment, where the only thing you have to worry about is the range of inserts or ectos, but it could be crucial to doing that same robbery out in the fringes... if the guy has an emergency radio system in his camp, it wouldn't be hard for him to get a pretty powerful signal out there. And with a mesh topology, that signal only has to hit a single node to potentially make it to the authorities. In an urban environment, your bigger risk is likely to be the public feeds and camera systems that act as big brother for the area; jamming the signals is worthless if someone has a wired feed to the camera filming your very robbery. Signal jammers don't use special hardware. If you can transmit, you can jam. That's not to say that specialized hardware couldn't be better at it, but it's not something that is exclusive to said hardware. However, most stock operating systems would probably not have options for jamming, so you would likely need a custom one on your system to allow it, or software that accommodates it. If there was any complaint that I have about the current rules, it's that it seems that anyone with mesh inserts can create a jamming signal. Most people don't even know how one is produced, let alone how to make a computer do it today. I would say that modifying an ecto or mesh inserts for jamming capability when they don't already have it would take a relatively quick programming test (interval time of perhaps an hour), or a hardware test for other radio systems. Once done, this makes that system capable of jamming at any point in the future. This may not be necessary for some open-source operating systems, so it may not be necessary for a PCs own mesh inserts if they are assumed to already have some non-commercial operating system from the outer fringes. That said, a jammer is likely not to be traced by something that's the equivalent of an IP address. If something is modified to produce a jamming signal, it's going to send out random noise on that frequency, and will likely not generate any protocol information in the signal. If you think about a transmission as akin to a phone call, signal interception would be the equivalent of picking up another headset and putting your hand over the mouthpiece to listen in on the conversation; jamming is the equivalent of screaming into the mouthpiece and making fart noises until either party gives up on trying to have a conversation. And if the keylogger is an example of the Air Force spying on itself, than it's one of the worst software logistics flubs since ever. Those keyloggers should have never have been detected, because the people monitoring the systems for malware should have been in the know. The military has really got to get its act together. Oh, and universal jamming doesn't require a test to scan. You only must scan to pinpoint a signal for selective jamming. Jamming does, however, still require an Interface test to utilize (this means that selective jamming requires two Interface tests... one to scan, one to jam). Also, did you notice that someone who's signal has been jammed can do an opposed interface test to beat the jam?

OneTrikPony wrote:

Thanks for this! :D This might make jamming a frequency hopping, spread spectrum transmission much easier. My original premise is that that is a very difficult thing to do. Maybe not, if you can listen to the transmission at the same time as you jam it then it's not hard to follow it around the spectrum while you grief it. I need to figure out if that's possible.

The scanning test likely includes calculating any transmission's frequency hopping and spectrum spread in it, all done before the jamming process starts. Since frequency hopping and spread-spectrum transmission are both likely to be standard for mesh-capable devices in 10 AF, then any hacker that is looking to do it would probably take both into account. Plus, frequency hopping tends to be easier to jam than intercept... listening to multiple frequencies is much harder than producing noise that fills multiple frequencies.

Arenamontanus wrote:

I have been thinking a bit about the supposed unjammability of neutrino transmissions. I think the proper answer is that it is rarely worth the heavy effort to jam neutrinos, but it can be done. A neutrino receiver is using future tech to somehow intercept neutrinos and turn them into a signal. This implies that there is a way to somehow up the cross section of matter-neutrino interactions *a lot* (this is not crazy or soft sf, just some odd effect presently unknown in the standard model of physics). If this is good enough then whatever this tech is can be used to shield, and recipients behind the shield will not get much signal. However, the tech might merely be mildly opaque rather than strongly opaque. If there is an upper limit to intercepting 1% of the signal strength with one device, then you will have a hard time building a full shield. A far easier approach is to make a lot of neutrinos and send them at the receiver. We know farcasters and especially emergency farcasters can do this. It is not implausible that other neutrino sources such as fission or fusion reactors can add noise to signals, especially if they are close by - or redesigned to mess up the receiver. In addition, the tech might provide nice ways of making neutrinos more easily (the emergency farcaster seems to imply this), allowing nearby neutrino noisemakers to overshadow remote signals. However, they are likely easy to pinpoint direction-wise. For true comms security, only QE works. Assuming post-singularity nasties doesn't know how to hack quantum mechanics...

One thing one of my groups theorized is that the inability to jam neutrino emissions has something to do with the fact that neutrinos are particles rather than waves. Radio jamming is about muffling other radio waves with your own, but a neutrino receiver can receive every single neutrino that comes its way, and discern its source from the angle of reception. This ability would make it possible to determine whether each and every neutrino is from a different transmission source, and filter out which one is the proper transmission to decode. In effect, a neutrino receiver collects ALL neutrino transmissions that comes its way, then separates them based on the angle of the source (with mild corrections in case of moving transmitters). It then runs through the data one at a time until it determines which one was intended for that receiver, and begins the process of decryption. This would theoretically make it unjammable (unless the jamming transmitter is at the exactly identical source angle from the receiver as the actual transmitter is... which would be ludicrously difficult to pull off).

Arenamontanus wrote:

You can do exactly the same with radio. You just need a very directional radio that ignores all the waves/photons from the wrong direction - a point to point beam. It is much easier to do at shorter wavelengths, hence point to point laser communication.

Apparently this isn't the case with neutrino transmitters... they do have the ability to directionalize, and very easily, probably due to their size. Neutrinos are as un-jammable as laser communications due to their directionalization, but with the added ability to pass through matter (making them even harder to jam, since you can't block the signal). The only real weakness to neutrino communications is that there's no way for the transmitter to directionalize... all transmissions must be encrypted, because anyone with a receiver in [i]any direction[/i] can intercept them (even accidentally). Though I still say that jamming is possible if a jamming transceiver sits precisely between the transmitter and receiver, thus allowing it to pose as the transmitter and screw with the transmission. But it would be hard as crap.

psiili wrote:

Quote:

The only real weakness to neutrino communications is that there's no way for the transmitter to directionalize...

Incorrect, you can aim and directionalize a neurino beam (depending, of course on how you produce it!), see CERN LHC neutrino beam experiment that produced hard-to-believe superluminal velocity values for the netrinoes. For a more layman-readable explanation: http://profmattstrassler.com/2011/09/23/how-to-make-a-neutrino-beam/ And of course, ALL signals should be encrypted. Just to be safe from eavesdroppers, curious AIs, and hungry, hungry TITANs. ;)

Hmm. That certainly puts a damper on that theory, and starts to make it curious that there are such fears about neutrino interception within the setting of Eclipse Phase.

Quote:

Hmm. That certainly puts a damper on that theory, and starts to make it curious that there are such fears about neutrino interception within the setting of Eclipse Phase.

Actually, just because you can aim and directionalize a beam doesn't mean someone else can't eavesdrop. For example, the CERN neutrino beam spreads to 2km diameter at 730km distance, so if you can be in the correct direction or just close enough with a receiver sensitive enough... I wonder, how many unofficial neutrino receivers set to listen there are on mars? Which gives me a creepy idea. Lets say a some exhumans go out into the kuiper belt / oort cloud and grab a generic icecube, say 100km wide and make it into a humongous neutrino receiver. Then, slowly put it into a suitably elliptic orbit somewhere far out. An orbit, which, from time to time comes in line with planet-to-planet transmissions so you can receive faint neutrino signals from data and egoes travelling between planets. Repeat a few hundred times. Icecubes are cheap. Use received egoes for nefarious purposes. Even better to use a run-out comet core somewhere in the inner system. Easier to get in line and and you can get by with less sensitive neutrino receivers. (Inverse square law and all that.) Of course, in any case you might get only a days to weeks worth of receptions per year, but depending on how high quality encryption gets used and how good your decryption is, you might strike rich. While quantum entanglement -based encryption is the gold standard, unbreakable to non-TITANs, is your transceiver properly entangled with the other end? Or did your subcontractor decide to cut his costs...

Decivre wrote:

Though I still say that jamming is possible if a jamming transceiver sits precisely between the transmitter and receiver, thus allowing it to pose as the transmitter and screw with the transmission. But it would be hard as crap.

Not really. It would be very simple to rig up a drone with a transceiver configured to transmit white or pink noise (or the equivalent) on the frequences you want to DoS. The receiver stage of the transceiver could be wired into the drone's on-board controller to provide input to commands which are the equivalent of "Position yourself in the center of the strongest transmission within the following lrange of frequencies and drive the transceiver's output stage at maximum output using the jammer module as its data input. Listen periodically to ensure that you remain within the region of greatest signal strength and reposition yourself appropriately to remain there." You would not even need a gamma fork of someone for that, it could be done with a limited AI, or even the Eclipse Phase equivalent of a simple Python script to implement it.

psiili wrote:

I wonder, how many unofficial neutrino receivers set to listen there are on mars?

The chapter on Mars in [u]Sunward[/u] implies that the number is 'many', seeing as how the narrator talks about listening to Radio Argosy on an improvised neutrino receiver along with a number of other broadcasts (page 97, PDF page 99).

psiili wrote:

While quantum entanglement -based encryption is the gold standard, unbreakable to non-TITANs, is your transceiver properly entangled with the other end? Or did your subcontractor decide to cut his costs...

One would think that if the other end was not properly entangled, there would be no reliable communication channel between the two. As for contractors cutting costs, examine the hardwired links leading from the receiver to the rest of the facility's communications network...

Decivre wrote:

Neutrino transmissions likely don't have anything akin to frequencies, so to speak. Rather, filtering out individual communications is probably based on direction rather than modulation. This means that unless your jamming signal is coming from the same direction (and I mean precisely-same direction), the receiver will likely know that the two transmissions are different.

Correct. Hence, programming a drone to figure out where the center of the neutrino beam in question is, positioning itself there, and broadcasting neutrinos along the same path to obscure the signal. The same principle applies with neutrino emissions as it would RF.