Posted by joebig 12 hours ago
The talk is about her attempts to learn about the Radio RDS (Radio Data System) standard, using a sound card to decode signals, finding a bit of bus-related information in that stream is weakly encrypted and proceeding to chasing it down. Very entertaining.
I'm so glad such people exist. I wish I could be one of these fearless and supremely knowledgeable people!
There's no trick to it (or there's a massive trick to it), you just refuse to let a mystery go until you know what's happening, mostly because figuring things out is fun.
In the process, you gain a large amount of knowledge.
Alternate data streams in FM like RDS, IBOC audio and FM time are not some new-fangled tech. This would/should be the first place to go to if you saw a signal that’s not modulated to analog audio.
Of course, the whole mystery aspect is just a hook and helps move the story along.
This was just ('just' for her, impressive for me) an exercise of going down the rabbit hole, and then curating that tour for us.
> I was looking at FM radio channels on SDR (rtlsdr came out in 2010) and noticed the RDS. So I looked into it.
Besides the fact you clearly skipped 90% of this talk and missed its point entirely… what if the person /didn’t/ know about alternative data streams.
I am excited for the day when you come across something that isn’t obvious to you. I doubt you would ever let others know though.
Besides that, FM broadcasting isn't a lawless place and is regulated by the government. Abuse will most likely lead to some kind of penalty, but I can't be bothered to read through the laws to confirm it :P
I love that hacker mindset :)
https://www.mediarealm.com.au/articles/fm-rds-radio-data-sys...
- Sad to request, but can you take thisoffline. It is kind of our service you hacked :)
[1]https://www.windytan.com/2013/05/a-determined-hacker-decrypt...
Unless something is theoretical impossible, the only thing stopping a determined hacker is the amount of time and coffee in reserves.
I don't think the fact that it worked in generating clicks is really an argument for bait titles. Given the positive comments about the content I think some editorializing could have been helpful to focus on the hacking journey aspect though, which seems to be the point rather the specifics of RDS itself.