"Oh great, a whole lot of stupid plots from episodes of NCIS and CSI just became real things."

[robkelk]

Apparently, there's a malware program that can turn an embedded computer into a radio transmitter.

http://www.rtl-sdr.com/motherboard-how- ... ur-office/
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[hmelton]

The CIA, NSA and HAM or amateur radio enthusiast have been doing this for years with computers and passing around programs for decoding the computer/electronic device "noise" picked up by AM radios.
Back in the 70's some computer programmers/engineers used to use what I think was an old PDP series computer with a AM radio set near a cable as a form of Audio output and were able to play simple tunes on the radio or tell what type of programs were running and what pats the programs were using in the computer.. Morse code was a  way to get information out to the user without using the printers.
I've been hearing rumours/stories for years that the NSA, CIA and FBI along with the many 3 letter organizations of at least half the world having "virus code" to increase the bandwidth and transmission range of this Side channel information/(noise) broadcast when a computer operates, especially when it prints, displays something on a monitor or in general send signals along wires to other devices.(It's not limited to EM noise, sound and light are also useful side channels.)
TEMPEST is a code name for a standard that attempts to reduce or limit side channel transmissions. I run across this code name better than 30 years ago when I was trying to find better ways of silencing the electronic interference induced into my radios and to reduce my radios interfering with the mostly unshielded consumer electronics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TEMPEST
Lately their has been a big breakthrough in the cost of software defined radios  in the form of a $15 to $35 USB TVdongle that can tune from around 20 megahertz to say roughly 2 Gigahertz.
http://www.amazon.com/NooElec-NESDR-Mi ... MFZXNEFB67
or
http://www.amazon.com/DVB-T-RTL2832U-R ... ined+radio
The above are at the two extremes one has been specifically modified to operate better as a software defined radio and HAM, Electrical Engineers and security tasked with meeting the TEMPEST standard or just trying to cut interference love these little dongles. You can plug them into a shielded laptop or tablet or even a more expensive phone and you have a wide band near star trek level "tricorder" sensor able to be carried in your hands a brief case or even a larger pocket and can store analyze/ decode any signal that has less than roughly 4 Megahertz bandwidth.
I've seen discussion dealing with using these dongles to create passive simplistic RADARS from the environments transmitted noise signals. You can use these dongles right now with open source software to track every FAA approve aircraft that is in line of sight.(The FAA and most other nations require most passenger aircraft to have a beacon that is tied to GPS that constantly broadcast their positions.)
Nearly all the software for these dongles  is open source and easily interfaces with custom or public domain signal decoders. Since the information is being recorded you could even write your own custom programs in say BASIC to decode the signals later.
HM
Edited to fix link

[Rajvik]

this sounds interesting, i must do more research into this
 

[robkelk]

Hate to break it to you

Don't worry about that. There's a limit as to what I'm allowed to say before someone makes something public, but that doesn't mean I don't know it. (You didn't accidentally go past that limit in your post, did you?)

this sounds interesting, i must do more research into this

Both the page I linked to and the Wikipedia page for TEMPEST (all caps) have some publicly-available information.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[hmelton]

/Quote from Robkelk/(You didn't accidentally go past that limit in your post, did you?)/End Quote/
I don't believe so.
I tried to keep it to information that is on several public HAM web sites and rumours mentioned in computer, engineering or security magazine, e-zines or blogs.  .
Sorry for not proofing the wikipedia link.
I'll Go back and edit it to the correct link.
HM

[hmelton]

Run across this on fox news.

http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2016/08/ ... lkswagens/

They mention software defined radio, but really this was a thing back when a old modified VCR/TV tuner or police scanners were the way to go.

I guess I should add that many of the older versions of these so called wire less keys have even worse security than the Volks Wagons mentioned above.

There is a certain prank rumour/story that made the rounds among engineering student back in I believe it was the late 90's and I finally saw a variation of it on the internet a couple of years ago.(Still looking for a link to the article or story.)

The common rolling code was broken or compromised back around 2007, but in one way these wireless key codes were broken from the start, at least for pranks.

The simplest version of this rumour told of a group of engineering students borrowing as many wireless keys as they could get their hands on and then taking binoculars, various sizes of metal pipes and various sizes of dishpans and parking within (hopefully at least a Half mile away) line of sight of a large car dealer ship and then finding which vehicles in the car lot happen to be at the right place in there codes that will accept one of the wireless keys you have.

The story goes that given 10 to 30 wireless keys and a large car lot will net you 1 or 2 vehicles that will accept 1 to 2 of your wireless keys.

The story goes that you need range extending pipes and dishpans because you will want a 2000 plus foot head start because many car salesmen were once college/high school "jocks" and even if they are letting themselves "go" you need to REMEMBER it is very hard to run or fight anyone when your busy rolling around laughing at the antics you have just put all those poor sales men through.

A golden key to the back door

I've always thought the idea of purposely putting a back door in any program let alone an operating system was the highest sort of stupidity, naturally it is something our government/criminals want/require and that all other governments/criminals are going to spend fortunes to reverse engineer.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/3106726/ ... vered.html

hmelton

Edited to fix a wall of text error and then to ad "go" to the Jock joke.