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| ▲ | andrewflnr 14 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | In practice you can infer a lot. The payload of a TLS stream is formally indistinguishable from random data, but you can still tell on the wire that it's TLS. There aren't a lot of widely-used TLS implementations. It's been a while since I looked at the specifics, but I bet there's a lot of more specific signature data in the plain-text parts of the protocol like supported ciphers. You can make some good guesses from the metadata. In the case of a physical interception, you can probably infer more. If you, after reading this article, spot an enemy drone that doesn't have any obvious emissions, then, well, there might only be one option for the software running on that drone, namely The Software that your enemy uses on their drones. Anyway, it's not clear to me from the article whether the source object from the signal will necessarily be invisible. I think every transmitter still at least looks like a point source of blackbody radiation. The signal may not be detectable from thermal background radiation, but if the background itself is coming from a big obvious drone, well, you know it "exists nearby". | | |
| ▲ | Retr0id 14 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Only because TLS never tried to be metadata-resistant in that way. For example, Noise protocol + Elligator + constant bandwidth, is indistinguishable. | | |
| ▲ | andrewflnr 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | You do have to try, though, is the point. It's not automatic just because the output of the cipher itself is cryptographically random. And when you do try, the lack of metadata will itself be a clue as to the software generating it. |
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| ▲ | nine_k 13 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > transmitter still at least looks like a point source of blackbody radiation The whole trick is that on average it is a source of blackbody radiation exactly like any other piece of matter next to it, same temperature. It does not produce a light or dark spot on an IR camera image. It turns hotter ("positive light") and colder ("negative light") with a very high frequency, in a controllable way. |
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| ▲ | nine_k 16 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | But once you've located the device, you can use a number of electronic warfare approaches to crack into it, not necessarily through its main radio interface. For instance, electromagnetic interference, heating, etc, all can inject a subtle hardware failure that the software is not ready to handle. | | |
| ▲ | Retr0id 16 hours ago | parent [-] | | Hence, "the real advantage is surely that nobody notices you're transmitting data at all?" | | |
| ▲ | nine_k 13 hours ago | parent [-] | | Not just that you are transmitting any data, but that there's some "you", or your device. "All clear, nothing to see here". |
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