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ProxyHam was a device that would let you share internet over traditional radio frequencies, enabling a user to be miles from the actual internet connection. A good tool for anonymity. It was supposed to be featured at Def Con, but has suddenly been shut down. All devices have been destroyed, no details will be released, according to the twitter of Rhino Security, the company behind the device.
This is possibly a National Security Letter, but due to their nature it's pretty hard to get that confirmed.
So if patents were not a problem, and if the FCC wasn't a problem - as confirmed by Caudill himself, why was this tool forced out of the public's reach? We may never know.
[...] For the record, I asked Caudill about getting a NSL, Caudill would only answer, "No comment."
I'd like to know what the commenters think. Was this actually rubbish like the AnonaBox and is this their elegant way to bow out? Or was this actually a solution that worked, and hence got shut down? Considering the fact these dudes wanted to demonstrate it at Def Con, it appears pretty legitimate.
Original Submission
(Score: 4, Informative) by Immerman on Tuesday July 14 2015, @06:43AM
>Its not like its hard to find the source if a radio signal.
Quite true - assuming the transmitter is actually transmitting. However, if you assume the relay transmits omniderectionally, then it will provide no hints as to your location beyond "within range", and so long as you don't activate your home transmitter (which is potentially tight-beam to minimize detection and tiangulation potential) while there's someone looking for you you should be safe.
I would imagine any truly nefarious applications of such a device would be restricted to brief single-shot applications where internet access is only needed for minutes or possibly hours, depending on the competence of the local authorities. Basically, brief enough that you can begin your activities, get detected, have the signal traced to the coffee shop or whatever, and have your transmitter shut down before the authorities arrive on-scene with radio detectors to track you down.
If you're hacking into strategic missile defense, that's probably not a whole lot of time. If you're doing something less urgent though, say downloading whistleblower files, or just covering your tracks in case someone takes offense somewhere down the line... well you might have months or years before someone decides to send men on the ground to trace you down. After all, until they perform a physical investigation you can mask your activities as if you were just another customer stopping in for coffee and wifi. If you have some sort of early-warnig system to detect a trace it would be even safer - as soon as you detect a trace, turn off your transmitter and you're gone. With sufficinet power and signal focus you could be anywhere. Thanks to Ham radio's long popularity most devices will even gracefully ignore the signal, so very little static, etc by which you could be retroactively traced.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 14 2015, @06:46PM
In the old days, before most of us here were born, the golden rule when you didn't want someone to know you were there was "Radio Silence". This is still true today, but sometimes that's impossible, which is why a lot of classified research goes into Low Probability of Interception (LPoI) or, applicable here, LPo Detection, which assumably relies on beam formation and ultra-wideband spread spectrum. I suppose this device could be doing something like that, but it's doubtful.
There's also the quick setup and takedown, as the parent mentioned, but this, too, may be unrealistic. As for the cops, the AFAIK the vast majority of police departments rely on gear they buy rather than making it themselves, so this isn't unplausable; OTOH, parent assumes foreign signals in the ham bands will be ignored, which is absolutely NOT correct.
Finally, while the 33cm band (902-928 MHz) is unlicensed at low power, there are an increasing number of high power devices appearing thanks to throwing money at the FCC and Congress: the worst of them are arguably smart meters for utility power metering, because they are becoming everywhere and impossible to avoid in many urban and even some suburban and rural areas.
Top that with most ham bands above 1 GHz being shared with military, astronomy, and more, and you could step on toes that will definitely resent it. In particular, the 23cm (1240-1300 MHz here in Region-2) is used by radars, including the Air Route Surveillance Radars (see Wikipedia) that surround the US borders looking for planes that don't have their squawkers on, among others; the lower part of this band is now a GNSS band as well and will be used by Beidou/Compass and Galileo, and possibly by future GLONASS as well, and has been restricted from use by hams already in parts of Europe.
Of course, if they're using Ubiquiti or other equipment and trying to sell it as their own, I could see that causing a lawyer visit as well...