Is wireless connectivity a reliability / DOS issue? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: SL4P
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 08, 2015, 12:07:36 am
content: With the me-too generation willfully creating 'wireless' connected gadgets and solutions.Is this a serious threat to 'national security'? No Joke!.Using mobile devices, wireless security systems, WiFi, ZigBee, RFID and the like - we're becoming dependent on these systems being available for the majority of the time - for convenience and ease of access.But this convenience exposes a huge white underbelly of weakness.Virtually any RF infrastructure, on virtually any band - can be jammed, corrupted, disabled, or evendamagedby targeted use of modified electronic appliances (read microwave ovens or other modified devices) with a bit of high-school physics knowledge.Theleast impact will render the device offlinefor the duration of the attack, next - to drop offline until re-initialized, through to component damage to the RF components of the devices under attack, or domino effects propagating through power or data infrastructure in poorly designed solutions.Wired projects are also vulnerable, but well established protocols are established for EMP/RF attacks on physical infrastructure...I know this proposition isn't new, but certainly some standards and compliance should be expected in product distribution and installation for this area of business... ?

author: Howardlong
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 08, 2015, 12:26:29 am
content: Possibly one of the worst from the point of view of its effects is GPS jamming. There are frequent GPS jamming tests run in the UK, and probably elsewhere. They show up in NOTAMs frequently.Any infrastructure where there is no service level should be undestood from a technical risk perspective, and that includes the Internet. That is one reason why much enterprise comms still use point to point links in various guises. It's not just guaranteed bandwidth, latency and up time, it's also the contracted service level around that.

author: SL4P
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 08, 2015, 12:36:33 am
content: Quote from: Howardlong on January 08, 2015, 12:26:29 amAnd diverse routes.

author: Howardlong
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 08, 2015, 12:43:38 am
content: Quote from: SL4P on January 08, 2015, 12:36:33 am...and using different providers using physically different cable routings, and avoidance of common mode failure by using a multi-vendor approach to infrastructure. Multi-site datacentres, minimum geographical distances, the list goes on. And it gets more and more expensive!

author: SL4P
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 08, 2015, 09:12:16 am
content: Quote from: mojo-chan on January 08, 2015, 09:05:13 amThe original post was not suggesting that everyone needs 99.999% up-time, but to bring to the table the simple fact that a lot of uninformed consumers believe and expect wireless is reliable, secure, infrastructure grade technology when it comes out of the box from K-mart.GPS mapping is faultless too right?

author: Howardlong
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 08, 2015, 09:54:16 am
content: Not sure I'd like to be sitting on a commercial air transport while someone was doing GNSS jamming as commercial air transport is very dependent on the technology.The silver lining is that in general it should be clear to crew that something is wrong, as it would be very difficult to spoof GNSS. Most likely it would simply result in degraded (or non-existent) position and altitude information.Of concern, though, is that there is a concerted decommisioning of traditional nav aids like VOR and NDB, so backup to GNSS would be increasingly based on inertial systems and their cummulative errors, pitot systems, and magnetic and gyro compasses, in conjunction with radar vectoring. it would be a very busy day in the office for ATC in the event of loss of GNSS.