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Giga-Hurts Radio: Terrorists Build Wi-Fi Bombs to Dodge Cops' Cellphone Jammers

posted by martyb on Tuesday May 21 2019, @09:48PM   Printer-friendly
from the next-up-will-be-AM/FM/shortwave-radio dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

The Register:

Terrorists have been caught strapping Wi-Fi-activated backup triggers to bombs in Indonesia, police claimed this week.

The explosives were discovered in a raid earlier this month, and included a switching mechanism that enabled them to be detonated using a signal sent via Wi-Fi if the main trigger, which uses a SIM card and waits for a mobile phone message to detonate, was blocked by radio-frequency jammers.

"With that, he can put [the bombs] in some backpacks, and later he would just detonate them from a distance of 1km, for example," said Brigadier-General Dedi Prasetyo at a press conference, according to The Strait Times.
...
Even though Wi-Fi will not travel as far as some cellphone signals, the police said that a careful construction of routers and amplifiers can extend the range as far as one kilometer. Which, while it may be news to people that deal with dead spots in their own house, is alarming to security forces trying to secure large areas full of people.

It might be fun to try infrasound, too.

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 2) by looorg on Wednesday May 22 2019, @12:05AM (4 children)

    by looorg (578) on Wednesday May 22 2019, @12:05AM (#845992)

    If only Wi-Fi jammers existed ... oh wait they do! They also work fine and jamming wi-fi is not really hard. This is clearly contrary to what the article claims where it apparently is some kind of james bond-esque next generation technology. But just with the normal stuff available over at say AliExpress, the range is usually not that great but 10m or so should be enough, one can easily imagine the overengineered stuff the police and military should have access to.

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  • (Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday May 22 2019, @12:51AM (1 child)

    by PartTimeZombie (4827) on Wednesday May 22 2019, @12:51AM (#846002)

    This is clearly contrary to what the article claims where it apparently is some kind of james bond-esque next generation technology.

    Yeah, there are abunch of questions that spring to mind about that article.

    For example, the headline

    Jakarta on terror alert ahead of election results

    Related articles:

    Fraud claims, deaths cloud Indonesia's mammoth elections

    Oh, really?

    Also:

    Old age, poor health caused deaths of poll administrators: Indonesia government

    Oh, really?

    So are these terrorists still going to be terrorists after they manage to overthrow the corrupt, brutal Indonesian government?

    The Acehnise, Balinese and Papuans might wind up being freedom fighters, if they can convince the US to stop supporting Widodo. (Fat chance).

    Indonesia is an empire, and all empires break up sooner or later.

  • (Score: 2) by driverless on Wednesday May 22 2019, @06:03AM (1 child)

    by driverless (4770) on Wednesday May 22 2019, @06:03AM (#846065)

    Yeah, but Indonesia uses WiFi frequencies used nowhere else on earth, so the jammers don't work. From the article:

    Wi-Fi uses a healthy number of frequency bands, such as 900MHz, 2.4GHz, 3.6GHz, 4.9GHz, 5GHz, 5.9GHz, and 60GHz

    No idea how you'd jam Indonesia's amazing 900MHz Wifi, or 3.6GHz WiFi, with a 2.4/5GHz jammer.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 22 2019, @10:17AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 22 2019, @10:17AM (#846122)

      I don't see how it should be more difficult to jam those other frequencies. As long as you can send a signal on those frequencies, you also can send noise on them.