SIGINT on a budget: Listening in, gathering data and watching–for less than $100

ShmooCon XIV - 2018

Presented by: Phil Vachon, Andrew Wong
Date: Sunday January 21, 2018
Time: 12:00 - 12:50
Location: Near Room
Track: Build It

It’s 2018 and many people are still using unencrypted wireless communications in critical systems. We will review how to build a robust and open signals intelligence (SIGINT) platform. As a proof of concept we show the platform capturing the pager bands. The talk will focus on how we demodulate, decode and analyze pages across the entire band using a Raspberry Pi. We will cover some SDR-related design and development issues, discuss DSP and other sundries in basic detail. We’ll also make a few observations about unencrypted communications today, using data captured in midtown Manhattan. Finally, there will be a discussion of some other applications that the same capture infrastructure can be used for, including some we’ve been building.

We’ll also run a real-time capture during the talk, showing what can be seen around the conference venue–all using a single Raspberry Pi.

Phil Vachon

Team MILK (Phil Vachon (@pvachonnyc) and Andrew Wong) is a spectrum-curious duo of signal hoarders. Fascinated by the unexpected order in the chaos of the aether, they’ve built a platform to capture, decode, and analyze various radio signals to satisfy their data fetish. Their current project started with the pager spectrum, covering multiple geographic areas. There’s a good chance they spent too much time staring into the abyss. Greets to the remaining IRC refuges. Hello to the Nefarious Five, we own the night.

Andrew Wong

Team MILK (Phil Vachon (@pvachonnyc) and Andrew Wong) is a spectrum-curious duo of signal hoarders. Fascinated by the unexpected order in the chaos of the aether, they’ve built a platform to capture, decode, and analyze various radio signals to satisfy their data fetish. Their current project started with the pager spectrum, covering multiple geographic areas. There’s a good chance they spent too much time staring into the abyss. Greets to the remaining IRC refuges. Hello to the Nefarious Five, we own the night.


KhanFu - Mobile schedules for INFOSEC conferences.
Mobile interface | Alternate Formats