Finnish Hacker Isolates Helicopter GPS Coordinates From YouTube Video Sounds 163
An anonymous reader sends a post by Finnish electronics hacker Oona Räisänen, who heard a mysterious digital signal in the audio accompanying a YouTube video of a police chase. The chase was being filmed by a helicopter. Räisänen wrote: "The signal sits alone on the left audio channel, so I can completely isolate it. Judging from the spectrogram, the modulation scheme seems to be BFSK, switching the carrier between 1200 and 2200 Hz. I demodulated it by filtering it with a lowpass and highpass sinc in SoX and comparing outputs. Now I had a bitstream at 1200 bps. ... The bitstream consists of packets of 47 bytes each, synchronized by start and stop bits and separated by repetitions of the byte 0x80. Most bits stay constant during the video, but three distinct groups of bytes contain varying data." She guessed that the data was location telemetry from the helicopter, so she analyzed it to extract coordinates. When she plotted them and compared the resulting curve to the route taken by the fleeing car in the video, it was a match.
what an ep1c hack (Score:5, Insightful)
i think i'm in love with this women.
Re:...and? (Score:4, Insightful)
Good thing she's Finnish (Score:5, Insightful)
Oona had better be glad she's Finnish. If she did that in the US, she could expect jack-booted thugs from Homeland Security bashing her door down. That data is SEKRET! The fact that it's only perceived as secret by said ignorant thugs because the marketing department of the vendor told them so is completely lost in the general panic. TUR'RISTS could FOLLOW the HELICOPTER! Beat to quarters and man guns!
I'd like to think I was exaggerating for effect, but judging by the past decade, I'm really not. The current security apparatus really is self-parodying.
(For those who want to bitch about how this perception runs contrary to Slashdot groupthink about the threat posed by that apparatus, I say only this: some of us are capable of projecting into the future. We want the spying and the blundering belligerence stopped because it might not always be blundering or incompetent. It still manages to be mortally dangerous even now. It could get much much worse.)
Seconded! (Score:5, Insightful)
A story worthy of slashdot. Please post more of these (not being sarcastic).
I second this.
I'm adequately supplied with political stories, you can get those anywhere. Stories that raise the indignation level are also common - "oh! how unjust that is!".
When you have stuff that nerds find interesting that you don't see everywhere else, nerds will come here to see it.
Re:what an ep1c hack (Score:3, Insightful)
It's sad that this got an insightful mod. The fact that everyone jumps to potential mate every time a woman does something is one of the biggest barriers to women in technical fields.
Re:This is impressive and all (Score:2, Insightful)
Did you look at her profile? She's interested in codes and ciphers and vintage electronics so this sort of is her hobby. Many here seem to bash her because this isn't something spectacular but she never claimed it was. All she did was to write about her observation in her own blog.
Re:what an ep1c hack (Score:5, Insightful)
Right, men should be attracted to women only because of their purely physical charms, not because of anything they actually do. And by "men" I mean "not neckbearded nerds", who should just stay in their fucking parents basements and forget about any sort of relationship.
Re:This woman is smarter than I. (Score:3, Insightful)
A weird kind of inverted sexism? There's only one kind of sexism. The fact that the media hypes any sort of female accomplishment in male dominated activities, often while not even mentioning the name of men who do interesting things by name, is blatantly sexist. Of course, even pointing this out is considered 'misogyny' somehow. Right, right.. Yes, those poor helpless women shouldn't have to tolerate any behavior they don't want, when they don't want. How could their lives ever be complete without white knight manginas like you rushing to their defense?
The only reason this is an article here is because of gender politics. If this accomplishment was done by a man, it wouldn't warrant special attention and would not be posted here. Reading data from a radio broadcast is nothing new and is routinely done by the ham radio crowd.
hyperbolic statement of respect (Score:5, Insightful)
It's sad that this got an insightful mod. The fact that everyone jumps to potential mate every time a woman does something is one of the biggest barriers to women in technical fields.
First off, if you think "mate" is what love is about, you're the one with the problem.
Second, one person is not "everyone."
Third: did you really think the poster was serious? It was a hyperbolic statement, meant as a strong statement of respect.
Fourth: we can't desire a woman's lifelong companionship for her body (sexual objectification), but please do explain what is wrong with desiring a woman's companionship for her impressive work? Because you do realize that damn near every straight woman on this planet selects her mate by his accomplishments, wealth, and social standing, right?
Re:... okay? cool, but what? (Score:5, Insightful)
What this person did doesn't require a lab, or anything that any of us don't have available. A strange sound was heard, and instead of going "hey I wonder what's on TV", the signal was sanitized, it's purpose guessed and then verified to be something understandable by anyone.
This isn't awesome because it accomplishes something. It's great because it was done for no reason at all. More stories like this please, and anyone who doesn't like it should find one of the million other websites that don't appreciate aimless-but-interesting tinkering.
Re:what an ep1c hack (Score:3, Insightful)
It does not even have to be human. Animals become very loved companions as well.
If the mind is sour, I don't have much of a use for it - and do not enjoy its presence.
A woman's mind is by far the most attractive thing she has as far as I am concerned. The rest, although it may be physically attractive, is meaningless if the mind is not there. Something like that, like a porn video, is only good for venting lust, and as soon as the prostatic pressure is released, the want or need of companionship with it is gone. Its just an irritant.
My own take is women spend way way way too much time at department store beauty aisles trying to mimic the celebrities of the day, and not enough pursuing their own intellectual interests.
What makes this particular woman stand out is she DID pursue her intellectual interests - and do I ever find that attractive. Someone who would understand someone else also pursuing intellectual interests instead of just being led around by the men behind the microphones running the "star making machinery".