Comment Re:Likely attack vector: NOAA weather radio (Score 1) 235
The exact format is tricky,
Oh spare me. Its about as complicated as an ancient FSK bell 103 modem, like a 300 baud modem. You want a complicated layer 1, try a 56K modem or heck even the PSK / QAM family would be more complicated.
As for your "tricky" layer 2 message format, again, unimpressed.
A really simple hack would be that they system is heavily overused. Every time one divorced parent is 5 minutes late at prisoner exchange time they call the SWAT team to embarrass and punish. Every time a snow flake falls they send a critical warning. Every time a drop of rain falls, a tornado watch alert is sent. Now yes I'm well aware that once in a while there is a REAL emergency. The point being that you don't need a full set of encoders and decoders, because there is not chronological component or hashing or salting or any crypto at all, a simple tape recorder is all thats needed for chaos.
I would not be surprised if "out there" on the net there's a sort-gray-hat ftp site full of wav files ready to play on a smart phone held up to a broadcast/remote broadcast/wireless microphone.
You don't need a EE degree to write your own SAME encoder, nor do you have to attack the geeks simply for being able to do it. All you need is to know how to use google and how to use wavplayer and/or whatever plays wav files on your smartphone, and