back to article Pagers shout data center creds, pop star airport arrivals

Anyone wanting to know the time world leaders arrive in Australia for the coming G20 summit need only listen to broadcasts from Aussie airports, researcher Ed Farrell has claimed at the Ruxcon conference. News of VIP airport arrivals are just one of the interesting pieces of information the Sydney security consultant monitored …

  1. Lee D Silver badge

    If you're worried about security, it wouldn't matter that you use pagers. You just wouldn't be transmitting any data that made sense to anyone. Whether through obscurity (i.e. "the guest has landed", or codebook numbers) or encryption, it wouldn't be any use to an outsider with hostile intent.

    That we're still using pagers, I find amusing, but it's more about WHAT you send, not how you send it. The number of people I meet that think that email is "confidential"... shocking news when their email server will happily send in plaintext still.

    We don't need technology updates or end-to-end encryption (which, actually, makes us more lazy and slack with the data we spew). We just need simple data management. Don't send anything that you wouldn't want others to know.

    1. Robert Helpmann??
      Childcatcher

      Don't send anything that you wouldn't want others to know.

      You were good right up to the last sentence and contradicts some of what you say earlier. Sooner or later, you will have to transmit something that you want one party to know, but not everybody, thus the basic problem. It's more than data management that's involved here. It is risk management, as well. Of course, the article highlights the lack of thought given to either by a wide range of people involved in sensitive areas. Thumbs up to you, Lee D, for good advice. None at all for the folks at the DSTO.

  2. Gordon 10

    If he's not careful

    He will be up on the stand being tried for pager "hacking".

    And a good thing too - these hippy backpackers bringing in dope and stealing our radio signals out of OUR air. Make an example of him I say!

    1. Woza
      Alert

      Re: If he's not careful

      Must save our precious bodily fluids radio signals!

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I got into radio scanning fairly recently, and I couldn't help but be intrigued by these data transmissions that sounded like an old ZX Spectrum loading a tape (ah, the power of nostalgia)!

    It didn't take long to find out that they were pager transmissions using the POCSAG and FLEX protocols, and it also didn't take long to figure out how to decode them. The mind boggles at some of the stuff being broadcast in clear text!

  4. Mookster
    Holmes

    For me, this doesn't count as hacking. More "listening"

    http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2009/05/12/how-to-make-a-cheap-pager-scanner/

    1. ecofeco Silver badge

      Good find.

    2. Alan Brown Silver badge

      I was doing this in the 1980s

      But then again I was installing/servicing pager transmitters (amongst other things) too.

      Anyone remember the old RTTY<->ASCII converters and their ilk knocked up using a UART and some supporting logic?

  5. netfryer
    Trollface

    "Department of Defence" ?? Does this entity go around removing fences?

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