Re: [Make-wifi-fast] Car tire tracking

Re: [Make-wifi-fast] Car tire tracking

[Dave Taht]

On Wed, Nov 21, 2018 at 9:17 AM David P. Reed <dpreed@deepplum.com> wrote:
>
> Schneier wrote in 2008 that some TPMS's have unique identifiers in the tire pressure sensors, and that the government requires that they be registered! https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/04/tracking_vehicl.html
>
>
>
> He seems to be a reliable source, but I'm skeptical that the tires radiate bluetooth signals for a lot of reasons. However, that doesn't make it less troubling.
>
>
>
> Now I am motivated to develop a software receiver that can tell me my tire pressure sensor info. Good use for my new XTRX that just arrived, serendipitously, today.

Pretty cool. Does it also already do LTE?

>
>
>
> Gotta find the specs of the radio system (hopefully NOT bluetooth) somewhere. If the gov't requires it to be a standard, it's probably open to the public.
>
>
>
> And then I can have fun hacking other people by sending fake tire pressures for their tires!

Heh.

>
>
>
> RTL-SDR probably can handle receiving what I suspect is the actual coding, though it's can't handl bluetooth frequency hopping.
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: "David P. Reed" <dpreed@deepplum.com>
> Sent: Wednesday, November 21, 2018 11:48am
> To: "David P. Reed" <dpreed@deepplum.com>
> Cc: "David Lang" <david@lang.hm>
> Subject: Car tire tracking
>
> I think everyone who works in "wireless", especially mobile wireless, should become well aware of privacy concerns.
>
>
>
> Privacy isn't just about secrecy, but about how information gathered by sensors is used by others. Now that it's trivial to gather terabytes of personally sensitive information and analyze it, we have to live in a Surveillance Society whether we like it or not. My own thinking (admittedly anarchist-libertarian) is that Norms need to grow, because Laws can't. Engineers (the ones who design and maintain systems) have professional responsibilities for the societal impacts of their systems. THey are not allowed to subcontract that to the people who specify or regulate their output.
>
>
>
> So if we know how to, or can invent a way to, maintain privacy better for all (users and bystanders), we really must.
>
> The shareholders/owners of profit-maximizing companies won't, and the government (even the elected one) won't.
>
>
>
> Which is why I am following up on tire pressure gauge unique addressability. Anonymous car presence detection is a whole 'nother thing.
>
>
>
> By the way, Dave, I'm sure you know that the WiFi MAC is the technology standard of choice for inter-vehicle communications in the Transportation departments and ministries of the world. One thing to argue for is to require MAC address randomization and periodic (every 10 minutes?) changes.
>
>
>
> Convoying in the Smart Car and Autonomous Car industries is an important design goal. That requires some kind of "addressing" but it really should be non-unique, anonymizing. That follows the standard Principle of Least Privilege in systems architecture, which every engineer of information and control systems should have at front of mind for new designs.
>
>
>
> Fortunately, nearly all users of the 802.11 protocol assume that the MAC address can dynamically change, and the hardware in the 802 standard devices all seem to support it.
>
> IPv6 actually supports (and IETF best practices encourage) randomization of the lower 64 bit half of the 128-bit address, with the upper 64 bits being the coarse grained routing mechanism, including subnetting. So one can indeed randomize at the IPv6 level for privacy, given the design that allows multiple v6 addresses per interface. You can have different "personae" in IPv6.
>
>
>
> This good-privacy-in-the-design can get broken by thoughtless engineering.
>
>
>
> That's why I spread the word.
>
>
>
>



-- 

Dave Täht
CTO, TekLibre, LLC
http://www.teklibre.com
Tel: 1-831-205-9740

Re: [Make-wifi-fast] Car tire tracking

[David P. Reed]

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The XTRX probably can do LTE transmission and reception. Of course LTE's protocols are the real barrier - compared to 3G, it's like SS7 vs. manual switchboards. There's a lot of code to write to do all the LTE functionality - certainly bigger than your Linux Internet stack. It doesn't come with PA's capable of transmitting at LTE power levels, but its LNA's probably are fine. The current XTRX CS doesn't have reference clock stability needed for LTE (its reference clock is 500 ppb). The next version called the XTRX Pro, scheduled for delivery in January, does (100 ppb). This is important for reliable OFDM on a shared channel. Software types generally don't pay attention to this issue as much as they should.
 
The reason I got the XTRX is that it is very small, mini PCIe sized, and also USB 3.0 compatible with a small carrier and metal housing.
 
I have also got an order in at CrowdSupply for a LimeNET Micro, same kind of modest price, but it has its own computer, a Raspberry Pi compute module. It will be delivered in a few months, when they start manufacturing. The performance characteristics are not in the XTRX's professional category, but it's super portable and general purpose, andwith the Pi's multicore ARM processor is very fast for DSP, while being self-contained.
 
I can legally self-certify and operate both of them as MIMO transceivers in SDR modes as a licensed Amateur, in a large set of wideband modes and bands at whatever power I like (up to 1.5 kW, if I add a PA that can do that), as long as I live within the "no commercial use",  "no music" rules, identify my transmissions every few minutes, and share nicely.
 
That's what the worldwide Amateur Radio licensing regime affords to us in Hacker Culture (not the modern definition of scary criminals, but the meaning of Hacker that we used at MIT in the 1970's). Transmitting outside the Amateur bands is, of course, not legal for me to do, as is listening to cellular communications bands. (I'm not sure what other SDR researchers are doing - my informal survey suggests that many students doing SDR are transmitting illegally, as they don't have licenses and their equipment isn't certified. The stuff I want to do is very QRP and very wideband so disturbing any FCC licensee sharing the band is very unlikely anyway.
 
 
-----Original Message-----
From: "Dave Taht" <dave.taht@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, November 21, 2018 4:06pm
To: dpreed@deepplum.com, "Make-Wifi-fast" <make-wifi-fast@lists.bufferbloat.net>
Cc: "David Lang" <david@lang.hm>
Subject: Re: Car tire tracking



On Wed, Nov 21, 2018 at 9:17 AM David P. Reed <dpreed@deepplum.com> wrote:
>
> Schneier wrote in 2008 that some TPMS's have unique identifiers in the tire pressure sensors, and that the government requires that they be registered! https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/04/tracking_vehicl.html
>
>
>
> He seems to be a reliable source, but I'm skeptical that the tires radiate bluetooth signals for a lot of reasons. However, that doesn't make it less troubling.
>
>
>
> Now I am motivated to develop a software receiver that can tell me my tire pressure sensor info. Good use for my new XTRX that just arrived, serendipitously, today.

Pretty cool. Does it also already do LTE?

>
>
>
> Gotta find the specs of the radio system (hopefully NOT bluetooth) somewhere. If the gov't requires it to be a standard, it's probably open to the public.
>
>
>
> And then I can have fun hacking other people by sending fake tire pressures for their tires!

Heh.

>
>
>
> RTL-SDR probably can handle receiving what I suspect is the actual coding, though it's can't handl bluetooth frequency hopping.
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: "David P. Reed" <dpreed@deepplum.com>
> Sent: Wednesday, November 21, 2018 11:48am
> To: "David P. Reed" <dpreed@deepplum.com>
> Cc: "David Lang" <david@lang.hm>
> Subject: Car tire tracking
>
> I think everyone who works in "wireless", especially mobile wireless, should become well aware of privacy concerns.
>
>
>
> Privacy isn't just about secrecy, but about how information gathered by sensors is used by others. Now that it's trivial to gather terabytes of personally sensitive information and analyze it, we have to live in a Surveillance Society whether we like it or not. My own thinking (admittedly anarchist-libertarian) is that Norms need to grow, because Laws can't. Engineers (the ones who design and maintain systems) have professional responsibilities for the societal impacts of their systems. THey are not allowed to subcontract that to the people who specify or regulate their output.
>
>
>
> So if we know how to, or can invent a way to, maintain privacy better for all (users and bystanders), we really must.
>
> The shareholders/owners of profit-maximizing companies won't, and the government (even the elected one) won't.
>
>
>
> Which is why I am following up on tire pressure gauge unique addressability. Anonymous car presence detection is a whole 'nother thing.
>
>
>
> By the way, Dave, I'm sure you know that the WiFi MAC is the technology standard of choice for inter-vehicle communications in the Transportation departments and ministries of the world. One thing to argue for is to require MAC address randomization and periodic (every 10 minutes?) changes.
>
>
>
> Convoying in the Smart Car and Autonomous Car industries is an important design goal. That requires some kind of "addressing" but it really should be non-unique, anonymizing. That follows the standard Principle of Least Privilege in systems architecture, which every engineer of information and control systems should have at front of mind for new designs.
>
>
>
> Fortunately, nearly all users of the 802.11 protocol assume that the MAC address can dynamically change, and the hardware in the 802 standard devices all seem to support it.
>
> IPv6 actually supports (and IETF best practices encourage) randomization of the lower 64 bit half of the 128-bit address, with the upper 64 bits being the coarse grained routing mechanism, including subnetting. So one can indeed randomize at the IPv6 level for privacy, given the design that allows multiple v6 addresses per interface. You can have different "personae" in IPv6.
>
>
>
> This good-privacy-in-the-design can get broken by thoughtless engineering.
>
>
>
> That's why I spread the word.
>
>
>
>



-- 

Dave Täht
CTO, TekLibre, LLC
http://www.teklibre.com
Tel: 1-831-205-9740

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Re: [Make-wifi-fast] Car tire tracking

[Dave Taht]

On Wed, Nov 21, 2018 at 9:17 AM David P. Reed <dpreed@deepplum.com> wrote:
>
> I think everyone who works in "wireless", especially mobile wireless, should become well aware of privacy concerns.
>
>
>
> Privacy isn't just about secrecy, but about how information gathered by sensors is used by others. Now that it's trivial to gather terabytes of personally sensitive information and analyze it, we have to live in a Surveillance Society whether we like it or not. My own thinking (admittedly anarchist-libertarian) is that Norms need to grow, because Laws can't. Engineers (the ones who design and maintain systems) have professional responsibilities for the societal impacts of their systems. THey are not allowed to subcontract that to the people who specify or regulate their output.
>
>
>
> So if we know how to, or can invent a way to, maintain privacy better for all (users and bystanders), we really must.
>
> The shareholders/owners of profit-maximizing companies won't, and the government (even the elected one) won't.
>
>
>
> Which is why I am following up on tire pressure gauge unique addressability. Anonymous car presence detection is a whole 'nother thing.
>
>
>
> By the way, Dave, I'm sure you know that the WiFi MAC is the technology standard of choice for inter-vehicle communications in the Transportation departments and ministries of the world. One thing to argue for is to require MAC address randomization and periodic (every 10 minutes?) changes.

Well, on this front it's worse than that. Any even semi-persistent
connection can do you in; cell phone towers are the most common
tracking means today. Google always knows where you are, and what
speed you are traveling at. I would certainly like to have a gps that
didn't phone home but those have been nearly wiped off the market.


>
>
>
> Convoying in the Smart Car and Autonomous Car industries is an important design goal. That requires some kind of "addressing" but it really should be non-unique, anonymizing. That follows the standard Principle of Least Privilege in systems architecture, which every engineer of information and control systems should have at front of mind for new designs.

It boils down to trust in google. It wouldn't surprise me - years from
now - to discover that law enforcement already could access this data.
That said, our country is not a place where I currently worry about it
overmuch, were it some places I've lived, and a target, I would.

Given "autonomous" cars phone home... anyone here ever read "safe at
any speed" by Larry Niven? Lessons there, too.

I'm going through a terribly retro phase. I got a boat. It doesn't
have any tech later than 1976 in it, powered up, most of the time. I'm
looking to replace the bluetooth enabled radio entirely... once I get
the diesel repaired and the autopilot working again (can't find one of
those that isn't also cross connected, either)

>
>
>
> Fortunately, nearly all users of the 802.11 protocol assume that the MAC address can dynamically change, and the hardware in the 802 standard devices all seem to support it.
>
> IPv6 actually supports (and IETF best practices encourage) randomization of the lower 64 bit half of the 128-bit address, with the upper 64 bits being the coarse grained routing mechanism, including subnetting. So one can indeed randomize at the IPv6 level for privacy, given the design that allows multiple v6 addresses per interface. You can have different "personae" in IPv6.

Meh, that 64 bit prefix is pretty self identifying, and it takes
technologies like mosh to survive changes going on underneath. Better
would be to work towards more apps running locally, off of local
resources.

But that's not the way the world is going. A whole generation has
grown up with "streaming" and downloading your own music, even, is
becoming a thing of the past. We are tied to the feed....

>
>
>
> This good-privacy-in-the-design can get broken by thoughtless engineering.
>
>
>
> That's why I spread the word.

It helps to keep trying.

>
>
>
>



-- 

Dave Täht
CTO, TekLibre, LLC
http://www.teklibre.com
Tel: 1-831-205-9740

Re: [Make-wifi-fast] Car tire tracking

[Jonathan Morton]

> On 21 Nov, 2018, at 11:01 pm, Dave Taht <dave.taht@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I'm going through a terribly retro phase. I got a boat. It doesn't
> have any tech later than 1976 in it, powered up, most of the time. I'm
> looking to replace the bluetooth enabled radio entirely... once I get
> the diesel repaired and the autopilot working again (can't find one of
> those that isn't also cross connected, either)

By coincidence, I've come across a vlog series about (UK) canal boating.  Small marine diesels currently on the market turn out to be astonishingly primitive machines compared to anything automotive; the vlogger's engine actually has a sticker on the sump warning that it's non-compliant with US emissions regulations for marine diesels.  The larger models produce a nominal 50hp from over 2 litres displacement; these are technically oversized for a narrowboat, but often fitted anyway.

And these are called "modern" engines, to distinguish themselves from truly ancient designs from the 1940s and earlier, which are sometimes still fitted to new or refurbished boats due to their quirky character.  One vlog showed a classic engine which required starting on petrol, with compression valves opened, before switching to diesel, and another one which actually required a derogation to be fitted without a silencer, because it would reliably coke one up if so fitted.

The "modern" engines actually take almost as much fuel to keep themselves running at idle as to drive a 20-ton boat at the canal speed limit of 4 mph.  Some of the more forward-thinking boaters are now fitting hybrid systems which can better than double their fuel economy by allowing the diesel to be switched off when not actively recharging the batteries, as well as allowing long periods of quiet, fume-free cruising (particularly important when it takes 2 hours to traverse the Standedge Tunnel).  The fuel economy improvements are particularly marked if electric drive is used to traverse a long series of locks, in which long periods of idling could otherwise be expected.

The main upside to such primitive technology is that it's easy to service the engine in situ, using hand tools and ordinary mechanical knowledge.  Only major overhauls need the attention of a workshop.

 - Jonathan Morton

Re: [Make-wifi-fast] Car tire tracking

[Dave Taht]

So, I have a diesel from 1972. It's BIG. It's HEAVY. And it *still
runs*. It's developed a fuel leak and I think is mixing oil and fuel
internally and the manual has what seems to be thousands of parts all
working together in it.

but *it still runs*, spitting fuel. I really sit there and just admire
how well we built things in the good ole days....

And she doesn't have bluetooth. Or a computer. Or nothin, just things
geared up just the right way. It's a marvel to me... I've loved learning
about how it works.

I've gone and looked at new motors, and in comparison they seem
impossibly fragile. I've also looked over the latest in electric
propulsion... but I cannot imagine an electric motor at this stage of
the game surviving 40 years in an aquatic environent. And the best
batteries are kind of a fire hazard.

I don't know if I'll rebuild this motor or not, as finding a mechanic or
shop willing to work on it has been impossible thus far.

For the record, the boat has eaten two phones, 1 tablet, one archer
C7v2, and a raspberry pi so far. And I needed to switch to VGA from HDMI
as the darn cables kept vibrating out. There's a picostation going on
the mast at some point, I have some hope that will last a while.

Jonathan Morton <chromatix99@gmail.com> writes:

>> On 21 Nov, 2018, at 11:01 pm, Dave Taht <dave.taht@gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> I'm going through a terribly retro phase. I got a boat. It doesn't
>> have any tech later than 1976 in it, powered up, most of the time. I'm
>> looking to replace the bluetooth enabled radio entirely... once I get
>> the diesel repaired and the autopilot working again (can't find one of
>> those that isn't also cross connected, either)
>
> By coincidence, I've come across a vlog series about (UK) canal
> boating.  Small marine diesels currently on the market turn out to be
> astonishingly primitive machines compared to anything automotive; the
> vlogger's engine actually has a sticker on the sump warning that it's
> non-compliant with US emissions regulations for marine diesels.  The
> larger models produce a nominal 50hp from over 2 litres displacement;
> these are technically oversized for a narrowboat, but often fitted
> anyway.

Simon (of dnsmasq) has one of these wonderful boats. I went for a ride
a few years ago. I'd love to wander the canals of england one day...

> And these are called "modern" engines, to distinguish themselves from
> truly ancient designs from the 1940s and earlier, which are sometimes
> still fitted to new or refurbished boats due to their quirky
> character.  One vlog showed a classic engine which required starting
> on petrol, with compression valves opened, before switching to diesel,
> and another one which actually required a derogation to be fitted
> without a silencer, because it would reliably coke one up if so
> fitted.

I totally get how "modern" is such a wonderfully english way of putting
it.

> The "modern" engines actually take almost as much fuel to keep
> themselves running at idle as to drive a 20-ton boat at the canal
> speed limit of 4 mph.  Some of the more forward-thinking boaters are
> now fitting hybrid systems which can better than double their fuel
> economy by allowing the diesel to be switched off when not actively
> recharging the batteries, as well as allowing long periods of quiet,
> fume-free cruising (particularly important when it takes 2 hours to
> traverse the Standedge Tunnel).  The fuel economy improvements are
> particularly marked if electric drive is used to traverse a long
> series of locks, in which long periods of idling could otherwise be
> expected.
>
> The main upside to such primitive technology is that it's easy to
> service the engine in situ, using hand tools and ordinary mechanical
> knowledge.  Only major overhauls need the attention of a workshop.
>
>  - Jonathan Morton
>
> _______________________________________________
> Make-wifi-fast mailing list
> Make-wifi-fast@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/make-wifi-fast

Re: [Make-wifi-fast] Car tire tracking

[Jonathan Morton]

> On 22 Nov, 2018, at 11:22 pm, Dave Taht <dave@taht.net> wrote:
> 
> I've gone and looked at new motors, and in comparison they seem
> impossibly fragile. I've also looked over the latest in electric
> propulsion... but I cannot imagine an electric motor at this stage of
> the game surviving 40 years in an aquatic environent. And the best
> batteries are kind of a fire hazard.

I do note that the recommended configuration for narrowboat hybrid propulsion involves old-school wet-cell lead-acid batteries (with an automatic watering system to reduce maintenance), a 10kW motor mounted well above the propshaft on a belt drive, and no fewer than *three* alternators hanging off the free end of the engine, one of which is dedicated to the starter battery circuit; the other two can recharge the main batteries while the mechanical drive pushes the boat along.  The hybrid circuit runs at 48V (so I think they're using two 24V alternators in series), and there's a mains inverter hanging off that.

One of the upsides to this setup is that there's loads of power to run standard mains-power electric appliances in the cabin, instead of weedy 12V models and/or LPG.  The projected lifetime of wet-cell batteries is about 10 years, which is better than the 3 years replacement interval recommended for gel types; they can be recycled, and their materials effectively remade into new batteries, when they do eventually go bad.

The engine itself, in the example shown, is basically a converted Kubota unit, normally associated with mini-diggers and the like.  Yes, they're still making new engines of the same basic simplicity; they meet emissions regulations by paying careful attention to the injectors, I think.  Meeting US regulations (stricter than Euro) appears to require reducing mid-range torque by a large factor, but that usually doesn't matter in a marine application.

The company apparently does seagoing versions of their engines as well as those designed for canal and river boats:
	https://betamarine.co.uk/engine-selection-for-yachts/

> I don't know if I'll rebuild this motor or not, as finding a mechanic or
> shop willing to work on it has been impossible thus far.

Fuel-oil mixing suggests worn piston rings to me, as that's the main place the two meet.  Any competent car or motorbike mechanic should be able to do something about that, without invoking a complete rebuild.  Fuel *leaks* will just involve figuring out where the leak is, and replacing either the joint or the pipe that's at fault; you may be able to do that more easily while the engine's out of the hull.

That's assuming the leak is in the supply/return system, not in the high-pressure fuel circuit of the engine itself.  I think older diesels tend to use a common-rail system instead of unit injectors, so more of the fuel system is at high pressure when running.

 - Jonathan Morton