Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/03/21/feds-target-amazon-and-other-online-retailers-for-selling-wireless-signal-jammers.html
…
5 Likes
They also sell Bluetooth jammers, sometimes combined in a device with a WiFi jammer. So, yeah, wire your security systems, folks.
4 Likes
There’s a freedom to hack angle here, but when you market the device for jamming that crosses the line. If you outlaw wifi jammers, only outlaws will have wifi jammers, which is actually better than every teenager with visions of “wifi down, can’t do my homework” having one.
2 Likes
I don’t suppose these jammers would work on TVs in public areas, would they? A “TV-b-Gone” is already on my list, I’m just thinking of a generalized solution for when there are multiple TVs in an area. One at a time gets a little obvious after the first few, but “click” and they’re all gone? Bliss.
Note: I’d actually be concerned about using one of these as the broad effect could inadvertently interfere with medical devices. Likely? Maybe not, but that’s not the kind of thing I care to test on unwilling subjects.
Depends on the resistance of the medical devices and also on how the jamming is being done.
Because of how wifi (doesn’t; unless 802.11w is being properly used) handles management frames there’s the relatively clean and elegant option of spoofing deauthentication frames. Can be done at standard wifi power levels(indeed, some APs have included it as a feature allegedly to protect against ‘rogue’ access points by DoSing APS in the vicinity if they attempt to impersonate authorized APs, or just for being in the vicinity. Also used by some sketchy convention centers to drum up interest in their usuriously priced wifi that they aren’t jamming, which the FCC was none too pleased about). Anything that doesn’t directly rely on wifi for its own data transfers and doesn’t fall over and die in the presence of wifi gear should be fine if someone is deauth attacking.
Or there’s the ugly, loud, way of just shouting louder than Part 15 devices are allowed to on the relevant frequencies. Hopefully something that safety critical equipment would still be able to reject; but will have indiscriminate effects on anything 2.4GHz(or on poorly filtered harmonics, which cut-rate jammers probably have) or 5GHz; so likely to be much more disruptive.
Would be a definite problem for ‘smart’ TVs that are depending on wifi data for streaming of some sort; much less likely to be helpful against broadcast TV, at least VHF. Could cause trouble for parts of UHF, SHF, S band and C band.
2 Likes
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
