[109699] in Cypherpunks
Re: (fwd) Motorola's MDC-4800 Police Data Terminal
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Ian Goldberg)
Fri Apr 2 00:35:29 1999
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
From: iang@cs.berkeley.edu (Ian Goldberg)
Date: 2 Apr 1999 05:20:01 GMT
Reply-To: iang@cs.berkeley.edu (Ian Goldberg)
In article <3703AD43.C675B0D2@brainlink.com>,
Sunder <sunder@brainlink.com> wrote:
>(I didn't see this on the CDR, nor from Coderpunks... not sure where this was
>posted to, but it showed up on the SpyKing list...)
>
>1) From: Bruce Schneier <schneier@counterpane.com>
>Subject: Motorola's MDC-4800 Police Data Terminal
>
>There's a Windows program that decodes the police car mobile data terminal
>transmissions. If you thought listening in on police radio frequencies was
>interesting, you should see what comes over on those data transcripts.
>Motorola's "encryption" wasn't designed for privacy, it's more like a
>checksum for transmission integrity. Basically, it's XOR.
>The software is free, although there is this helpful notice on the Web
>site: "Decoding MDT transmissions may be illegal in some countries, you
>may want to check the laws for your country before using this program."
><http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/Facility/7646/>
>
If I remember correctly, there's no encryption at all; there's just the
error correction, and the fact that it's transmitted at some very strange
baud rate.
- Ian "I would think _inserting_ data into those channels would be more
interesting than _listening_..."
