WA Radio Scanner Users' Group

With police switching to digital encryption, i'm sure Uniden are not happy about this.
With Uniden being such a massive worldwide company for many years, they would be losing an incredible amount of money through scanner sales.
I'm sure Uniden have or will look into it, but i suppose if Uniden can't do anything about it, then no company can.
Just a last glimmer of hope i guess.

People will have to find something else to listen to.

dazla wrote:People will have to find something else to listen to.

Yes i guess so. No use in me paying $900 for a digital scanner.
I'll stick with the Uniden trunktracker UBCT8 i think.

prettty much..

francois wrote:With police switching to digital encryption, i'm sure Uniden are not happy about this.

You have to take things in perspective, though. Uniden probably sell 1000 times more portable telephones, answering machines etc than they do scanners.

Ill end all your hopes now. Lol, Sorry.

DES encryption which is used by many state police forces including WA when its fully introduced WILL NOT be hacked or decrypted. I use DES encryption on APCO 25 and from my knowledge and research, i can tell you right now, it will not be cracked.

No manufacturers of scanners will introduce scanners able to decode it because it cant happen.

francois wrote:With Uniden being such a massive worldwide company for many years, they would be losing an incredible amount of money through scanner sales.

Yes, i expect the loss of a few scanner sales in Perth, Western Australia would be of concern .

auntys_eyes wrote:

francois wrote:With Uniden being such a massive worldwide company for many years, they would be losing an incredible amount of money through scanner sales.

Yes, i expect the loss of a few scanner sales in Perth, Western Australia would be of concern .

Hey I have uses for scanners other than for monitoring VKI so I'm expecting to pick up a bargain or two when the time comes

im waiting for the cops to go digital , so i can get a bargan and listen to the aviation band , theres more to life , and radios than listening to cops...

APCO 25 Encrypted wrote:Ill end all your hopes now. Lol, Sorry.

DES encryption which is used by many state police forces including WA when its fully introduced WILL NOT be hacked or decrypted. I use DES encryption on APCO 25 and from my knowledge and research, i can tell you right now, it will not be cracked.

No manufacturers of scanners will introduce scanners able to decode it because it cant happen.

That is what the Kriegsmarine U boat flotilla headquarters said about the Enigma coding maching during WW2

and look what happened there. .

ahhh but that was only after an Enigma machine was stolen from a U-boat! until then it was uncrackable. They then also through in the extra wheel which confused things a heap but having already established the formula they were able to to work out the next lot.

unfortunately for you, encryption and coding has moved on a LONG LONG way since then. Hell now the officer can report his radio as stolen, and it's cut off the radio network...It's not going to be cracked.

[Geeky IT Lesson simplified]
Further to that, Network devices every wired and wireless, blue tooth included has what's known as a MAC address or Physical address, generally this is hard coded and can't be changed, it's a unique id. You can setup your home wireless to enable only certain MAC addresses to access the wireless. I'm sure the police will have something similair to this too, so your broken encryption that worked for a split second won't update, because your receiver is not in "the list". [/Geeky IT Lesson simplified]

Tyranus wrote:
[Geeky IT Lesson simplified]
Further to that, Network devices every wired and wireless, blue tooth included has what's known as a MAC address or Physical address, generally this is hard coded and can't be changed, it's a unique id. You can setup your home wireless to enable only certain MAC addresses to access the wireless. I'm sure the police will have something similair to this too, so your broken encryption that worked for a split second won't update, because your receiver is not in "the list". [/Geeky IT Lesson simplified]

I'm no nerd, but are MAC address attached to network card? If you steal a laptop / want to defeat a bit of hardware etc can't you just change the network card or get a MAC Address changing bit of software to load at startup etc.... A bit off topic I realise though..

Yes you can, each adapter has a MAC address which can be changed either by default drivers that come with the card, this then updates the card, or if you have Server quality cards, you can trunk the ports, and that creates a virtual port with virtual MAC address or your you can just replace your NIC, there are a plethora of different methods, however not all will get you the solution you desire, infact it could cause problems...Such as a MAC address conflict which occured with a virtual PC and a NIC of a normal computer on the network. However again I think if WAPOL suddenly found 100 radios receivers with the same address some questions would be raised.

BACK ON TRACK.

The question was about digital encryption. IT CANNOT BE HACKED, CRACKED or DECODED by (the average joe). Only the military and highly classified govt departments have the ability.

APCO 25 Encrypted wrote: The question was about digital encryption. IT CANNOT BE HACKED, CRACKED or DECODED by anyone other than the military and highly classified govt departments

Well it can. It's encrypted well enough to keep curious civillians from listening in, but I doubt it'd be outside the capabilities of any competent intelligence agency.