What matrix Actions can do against shortwave radio, Can I jam/intercept/ Options

[Cthulhudreams]

I get a pair of modern CB radio or a brace of walkie talkies and I take them to 2070.

What matrix actions if any can be viably used against them?

Ones that occur to me as being entirely logical are "Jam" and "Intercept", and using "Sniffer" to find the node.

But can I also hack the transmission and replace it with something else, and can I launch an exploit attack against the receiver?

Edit: If you don't think I could intercept it with my commlink and software suite, why not?

Edit2: Changed analogy from shortwave to Walkietalkies/CB radio.

[Kronk2]

Locally, aside from hacking the transmitter I would think that there would not be much a comlink would be able to do to it.

Logic.
What is in the air is in the air. You may be able to Yankee jam it by hot broadcasting over the frequency that it is using, if you time it very carefully and get a strong enough transmitter, you may be able to totally highjack his frequency and run your own show. However the best way to handle hijacking the show is to hack the originating stations playlist. All the DJ does is keep the audience happy. Heck there are radio stations now that don't even bother having DJ's, its all done by the programing directer ahead of time, or by pressing random on the corp sponsored playlist.

Not going to start my rant against the death of radio in America.

[Cthulhudreams]

Shortwave radio was a fairly arbitary, and thinking about it possibly bad example. Maybe a CB radio would make the problem I am trying to draw out via analogy clearer.

Hell, two walkie talkies.

[Kronk2]

So let me get this sorted in my head. You are trying to sort out what kind of interference one could generate with a comlink to a radio style device, yes?

<Given that a comlink can broadcast in the same frequency range as the radio device you are trying to affect>

I could totally see sniffer being somewhat useful if they are using Spread Spectrum

[Cthulhudreams]

I'm aware of the real life uses of RF devices, jamming there of etc.

What I'm asking is, Can I use a commlink to: Intercept the communication between the walkie talkies (seems logical?)

Haxor out the message going between the walkie talkies and replace it with my own?

Use exploit to hack into one of the walk talkies wireless-ly?

:)

[Kronk2]

[Rotbart van Dain...]

[Buster]

CB/walkie-talkies are called "micro-transceivers" in SR (p. 320). A Scan program can run for cheap on your commlink that will scan all frequencies for you and find the CB/walkie-talkie/micro-transceiver traffic (if they are not frequency hopping).

If the cb/walkie-talkie/micro-transceiver jock keeps hopping frequencies, you need a (very expensive) Sniffer program on your commlink and use electronic warfare to keep listening to his conversation. See Intercept Wireless Signals (p. 225).

[The Jopp]

[Cthulhudreams]

So falling back to 'old school' technology - in this case 70 year old radios doesn't actually do anything? Though the exploit question is undecided.

[Rotbart van Dain...]

Actually, that only references towards recording/forwarding said traffic.

There is no rule for inserting fake traffic like there is for wired connections. Yet.

[The Jopp]

[Blade]

I'd go with Robart: falling back to old school radios won't do anything as far as signals are concerned: they send and receive wireless signals just like any other wireless node except that they use a simple protocol to do so.

I'd also say that they are protected from exploit simply because you can't change any settings by sending wireless signals to them. You can't even log on them!

But you don't need a 70 year old radio to achieve this: a transceiver with everything hardwired will give the same results.

[Rotbart van Dain...]

[The Jopp]

[Rotbart van Dain...]

Sounds like:

[Adarael]

I find it very hard to believe that an area broadcast is capable of being hacked and edited in real time, especially since unlike with wireless matrix traffic there's no source and target node(s). It's simply RF manipulation on a broad scale. I mean, if I have a 5km range, and you have a 5km range, and we're 2.5 km apart.. okay, maybe you can futz with my transmission as it passes through yout strong signal zone. But the people 5km on the other side of me, that are 2.5 km outside of your signal range? How are you hacking signal being broadcast to an area you can't even reach?

I think jamming is your only realistic solution.

[Blade]

I guess it's possible to do so by, to take a contemporary example, tricking the collision prevention system.

It's a bit technical but I'll try to explain it as simply as possible:
when A tries to reach B, if C is emitting in the middle, there could be collisions between the two signals which will block A's messages to B.
There are ways to prevent this from happening.

But let's consider that you're C, and you're preventing A and B from sending anything to each other but you trick them into believing that they can. They'll send signals, your own signals will collide with them anb both will receive whatever you're sending.

So it's technically possible. It's a bit like jamming, but far more subtle.

[Buster]

You can capture, block, and re-send edited data on wired lines because the medium is contained within the wire. However, wireless traffic is broadcast in all directions and goes right past you as you intercept and read the transmission. You'd have to capture the transmission and then smother it before that same transmission passed you at the speed of light and reached the recipient.

Therefore, you'd need some way of jamming the incoming transmission so that jammer does not block that incoming transmission for you so you can read the original message, but no one else can. Then you'd need some way to re-send your edited transmission to the original recipient without jamming yourself. I'm not sure jammers have that kind of control even in 2070.

Maybe in 2070, electronic warfare has progressed to the point where wireless signals can be selectively manipulated the way active noise-cancelling headphones selectively block and transmit sound.

I don't have a degree in electromagnetic theory, but you can always say that technomancers can do it, but no one else can.

[Adarael]

[hobgoblin]

[Cthulhudreams]

[Adarael]

Simply this: the commlink is designed to process, create, and manipulate matrix data, not RF signals. This is why the commlink is not also an area jammer, also a bug scanner, and also a laser microphone.
Also why they are not keycard spoofers, retinal scan spoofers, cellular glove molders, or anything like that. While commlinks are extremely powerful, they are not extremely powerful at every type of calculation possible. I've sort of assumed that other devices used in security operations have specialized processors and chips that enable them to do their jobs in real-time more effectively than commlinks, which is why they exist rather than people just using software for the same functions. This is also why using hacking to open a maglock is a very different process than just swiping a keycard spoofer.

Or, to put it another way: your commlink is very powerful. But is it powerful enough to use software to effectively emulate the functions of items such as the "Select Sound Filter" without a specialized hardware add-on? The jury says no, because there would be cheaper software options for doing so rather than the still relatively cheap disposable earplugs, in that case. The architecture for such devices is necessarily highly specialized, which is why it isn't included in all-in-one devices like a commlink. Same reason my cellphone doesn't come with an MP3 player unless I pay extra - there's no reason for that chip architecture UNLESS I wanna play MP3s.

It's not that they can't if you mod them, it's that as stock they don't have the hardware to do it.

[Cthulhudreams]

Isn't Matrix data an RF signal? I assumed RF comes into play at this part? Thats why I asked about CB radios etc because you could look at them as an extremely primitive 'trix' node.

[Adarael]

Different frequencies and different properties because of that. WiFi (assuming the same freq band as now) is 2.4 GHz. CB is 27 MHz, Emergency and military radios run between 30 and 950 MHz.

A good rule of thumb is "The higher the hertz of a radio band, the higher the datarate and consequently the clearer the signal." That's why despite ELF radio being able to reach submarines while they're under water, they wouldn't use ELF to transmit complex data, simply to signal the sub to rise enough for a regular antenna to protrude from the water. As ELF is between 3 and 30 Hz, subs can only recieve a couple of letters per second.

Basically standard RF just isn't the band commlinks are designed to work on - at least not stock commlinks.

PS: This is a gross, gross simplification of all of the differences in datarate, freq band and all that. I know this. But this is, at base, why commlinks don't talk to radios unless you mod them.